A ship employee hit with the highly contagious Omicron variant, who was considered clinically recovered on his arrival in Bacolod on December 31, was retested and found positive for COVID-19 again on Monday evening, January 3.
He is the first Omicron-hit person reported in Western Visayas.
Dr. Rosalie Deocampo, Emergency Operations Center-Task Force (EOC-TF) cluster head for contact-tracing, said his positive test result had a cycle threshold of 36.7, which means that he is less infectious.
It is quite normal for those found previously infected to still yield positive results up to 90 days after but are no longer considered infectious, she said.
His wife tested negative for COVID-19 Monday night, Deocampo said.
The 38-year-old overseas Returning Overseas Filipino (ROF) and his wife, who are not from Bacolod City, were isolated and tested as soon as the city government was informed by the Philippine Genome Center on January 1 that he was hit with the Omicron variant, Em Ang, EOC-TF executive director, said.
“There is no cause for alarm, he is not considered infectious,” she assured.
The ROF from Mindanao came to Bacolod to visit his wife, who is from Pampanga and works for a call center in the city. He was picked up at the Bacolod-Silay Airport by his wife on his arrival and he immediately checked into a Bacolod hotel, Ang said.
Deocampo said on December 12 the ROF underwent an RT-PCR test in Florida that yielded a negative result, and on December 13 he traveled from Miami to New York, where he started his 15-hour journey to Manila.
On December 15, he arrived in Manila and checked in at Century Park Hotel in Malate, which is an Overseas Workers Welfare Administration-accredited quarantine facility, and on December 17 he developed a sore throat, cough and colds, she said.
He underwent the mandatory RT-PCR test required on the fifth day after his arrival on December 19 that yielded a positive result on December 20.
The infected ROF was transferred to another Malate hotel that serves as an OWWA isolation facility for COVID-19 positive patients on December 24 and on December 31 was released from isolation by the doctor at the facility, saying he had already fully recovered, Deocampo said.
No RT-PCR test was conducted prior to his release from the isolation facility in Malate, she added.
Recovery was based on clinical findings, meaning he was already asymptomatic from December 20 to 31 when he was released and allowed take a sweeper flight for Bacolod, she said.
The EOC contact-tracing cluster reported that his wife had a December 5 to January 5 booking at the Check Inn Hotel.
Deocampo said the wife had actually rented a room in a boarding house at Singcang-Airport but was waiting for her husband to arrive before moving in.
Her co-workers at the BPO company should not be alarmed because the last day she reported for work was on December 29, two days before she had contact with her infected husband, Deocampo said.
Bacolod City is strengthening its borders against COVID-19, Bacolod Mayor Evelio Leonardia said.
“This is apparently not a local case. This is an imported one based on the accounts made by the DOH and other experts. It so happened that his genome sequencing result came out late. But just the same, we have to take precautions,” Leonardia said.
“The Omicron variant is highly transmissible, it’s more contagious than the Delta variant that is why it is important to be vaccinated against COVID-19,” Ang said.
The ROF was fully vaccinated and had received a booster shot that is why he has been asymptomatic, Ang said.
The Philippine Genome Center also reported that a Barangay 8, Bacolod, resident, also tested positive for the COVID-19 Delta variant but has since recovered, she added.*