Kabankalan City Mayor Pedro Zayco who briefly went on home quarantine after being exposed to a City Health Office COVID-19 positive employee tested negative for the virus Thursday afternoon, March 25.
He was swabbed for an RT-PCR test Thursday morning and the negative result came out at 3 p.m., he said.
Zayco said the CHO nurse who tested positive is in charge of administrative work and does not attend to patients.
He was at a Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program meeting attended by the CHO employee last week, Zayco said.
The mayor said he was not seated close to the CHO worker but to set an example to the 15 others at the meeting he underwent an RT-PCR test along with them.
Kabankalan had 14 active COVID-19 cases on Thursday.
The lifting of the rule on testing passengers on arrival in Negros Occidental and placing them in quarantine prior to the release of their negative test results in compliance with Inter-Agency Task Force Resolution 101 appears to have caused the increase in cases, he said.
Passengers can only be tested from their point of origin and can no longer be quarantined on arrival under Resolution 101.
Zayco said three Tagalog speaking individuals who were tested in Bacolod City had stayed in a boarding house in Kabankalan City and when their test results were released they were found to be COVID-positive.
On contact tracing the landlady of the boarding house they stayed at and one of her relatives also tested positive, Zayco said.*