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Bacolod gov’t employees hit by Covid-19 now 19

Three more Bacolod City government employees have tested positive for Covid-19 bringing the total to 19, City Administrator Em Ang said Sunday, April 4.

Two more employees of the City Engineer’s Office and one from the Office of the Mayor tested positive, she said.

The Bacolod City Government Center, which has been disinfected, will reopen on Monday, April 5, she added.

The RT-PCR test results of close contact of the 19 are being awaited, while surveillance testing of city government employees for COVID-19 will be conducted on Monday, Ang said.

Dr. Chris Sorongon, the Bacolod Emergency Operations Center deputy for medical data and analysis, and 15 Bacolod City government employees had tested positive for COVID-19 last week.

The 15 government employees who tested positive earlier are from the City Engineer’s Office (CEO) – eight, Office of Councilor Cindy Rojas – five, EOC secretariat – one, and City Treasurer’s Office (CTO) – one.

Sorongon, who had received his first Sinovac dose, was being treated for moderate COVID-19 said he is getting better.

On Wednesday, March 31, he was admitted at the Riverside Medical Center Inc. after not feeling well and tested positive for COVID-19.

Sorongon said he faces a lot of people every day because of the vaccination education program, and he conducts onsite inspections of reports of minimum health protocol violations.

He does not know where he got the virus but the message is COVID spares no one, Sorongon said.

“We have to be very careful especially since we are considering the presence of a new variant, the P3 variant, that could be in Bacolod,” he said.

The best thing to do is to have our specimen’s genome sequenced for support, he said.

“The latest cases in Bacolod fit into the characteristics of the P3 variant, which is common to those who live in condominiums and subdivisions, it hits one member of the family and chances are the entire family will get it, and children are susceptible,” he said.

In the past, seldom would you hear of children being hit by the virus, now in a family of 11 who tested positive for COVID, four were children, he said.

A nursing assistant hit by the virus also infected two of her children, Sorongon said.

The P3 variant is common in Central Visayas, and is only known in the Philippines but has its lineage in the Brazilian P1 variant, he said.*

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