Three inmates at General Santos city jail positive for COVID-19

GENERAL SANTOS CITY — Three inmates have tested positive for the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) inside a reformatory facility in Purok Lanton, Barangay Apopong here, a jail officer said.

Supt. Metz Milton Placencia, the warden of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) facility, said the three inmates – a female and two males, aged between 37 and 47 — arrived at the facility on May 5 along with 10 other offenders from the lock-up facility of the San Isidro police station.

But on Mayo 6, jail officers found out that the female inmate was a close contact of another inmate at the San Isidro police station who earlier tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

They immediately sent the woman inmate for an antigen and RT-PCR swab tests at the Rural Health Unit (RHU) in Barangay Apopong, which both yielded positive results.

Placencia said they also subjected the 13 other male inmates from the San Isidro police station to swab tests, where two inmates tested positive for COVID-19.

But 63 other inmates who arrived at the facility at the same time and on the same day that the 13 males and the female inmate arrived all yielded negative results from the same tests.

The infected inmates have been isolated from the rest of the jail population but the jail warden said he was worried that the three cases might put at risk the rest of the jail’s 1,267 inmates.

This city saw a spike in the number of COVID-19 cases in the past several days, peaking at 56 new active cases on Sunday. The City Health Office listed 100 deaths here due to COVID-19, so far.