DoH probes 11 suspected cases
Credit to Author: Franz Lewin Embudo| Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2020 16:18:00 +0000
As many as 11 persons in the Philippines suspected of being infected with the 2019 novel coronavirus are “under investigation,” Department of Health (DoH) Secretary Francisco Duque 3rd said on Saturday.
“As of now, we have 10 to 11 [suspected cases], but this is still for verification. They are what we call ‘persons under investigation’,” Duque said in an interview during the ceremony for the Rotary Golden Wheel Awards in Quezon City.
The viral contagion has killed 56 people and infected nearly 2,000 in China.
The Health secretary refused to identify the persons being examined, saying he wanted to protect their privacy. He also did not say whether they were under medical confinement.
“I have a list [of the individuals], but I could not share it with you because there are sensitive information and we have to respect the patients’ privacy,” he said.
Throat swabs from the persons under investigation will be examined by the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine. The examination takes from 24 to 36 hours, Duque added.
If a patient’s specimen tests positive for the non-specific coronavirus, it will be sent to the International Reference Laboratory in Melbourne, Australia.
The Melbourne facility has the ability to determine if the virus is the same as the one found in Wuhan, China, Duque said.
He emphasized there was no confirmed case of the new coronavirus infection in the Philippines yet.
“We have no confirmed case of novel coronavirus. The latest confirmatory test results yielded a negative for the five-year-old Chinese… who at the moment is still in one of the facilities in Cebu City,” Duque said.
Meanwhile, Sen. Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go gave assurances that the government has bolstered its defenses against the virus, citing the thermal scanners and tight security in 40 airports and seaports.
“We are securing the areas through border and community surveillance of our Bureau of Quarantine and our Epidemiology Bureau Surveillance team,” he said.
Fast spread
China on Sunday expanded drastic travel restrictions to contain the contagion as the United States and France prepared to evacuate their citizens from Wuhan, a quarantined city at the outbreak’s epicenter.
China has locked down the hard-hit province of Hubei in an unprecedented operation affecting tens of millions of people to slow the spread of a respiratory illness that President Xi Jinping said posed a “grave” threat.
Outside the epicenter, three cities, including Beijing, and an eastern province announced bans on long-distance buses from entering or leaving their borders.
Originating in Hubei’s capital of Wuhan, the virus has spread throughout China and around the world, with cases confirmed in around a dozen countries as distant as France, Australia and the US.
The US State Department said on Sunday it was arranging a flight to repatriate staff at its Wuhan consulate and other American citizens trapped in the city.
The flight departs Wuhan on Tuesday for San Francisco, it said in an email to Americans in China, while warning of “extremely limited” capacity for private citizens.
France’s government and the French carmaker Groupe PSA — which has a sizable presence in Wuhan — also said they were formulating plans to evacuate staff and relatives, who would be taken to a city in a neighboring province for a quarantine period.
Sri Lanka said its Beijing embassy was considering action regarding its nationals in Wuhan.
China would normally be celebrating the Lunar New Year holiday this week, but Wuhan’s eerie quarantine calm deepened on Sunday as new restrictions banned most road traffic in the metropolis of 11 million. Loudspeakers offered tips slathered with bravado.
“Do not believe in rumors. Do not spread rumors. If you feel unwell, go to the hospital in time,” the message said.
“Wuhan is a city that dares to face difficulties and keeps overcoming them,” the female voice added, mentioning the deadly 2002 to 2003 SARS epidemic and 1998 Yangtze River flooding.
Israt Zahan, a Bangladeshi doctoral candidate living in Wuhan, said she and other students were staying in their homes as it was “too risky” to go outside.
“The bustling city looks like a ghost town from my window. The shops are all shut down. I am rationing the food at my home. It will last for two days. Then I don’t know what I would do,” she told Agence France Presse by phone.
Despite anxious scenes at crowded hospitals in recent days, there were no signs of panic in the city.
But defenses were bolstered elsewhere in the country.
Beijing suspended long-distance bus services into and out of the capital beginning Sunday. Similar suspensions are planned for the entire eastern province of Shandong — home to 100 million people — plus the northern cities of Tianjin and Xi’an.
The southern city of Shantou had announced a ban on vehicles entering its jurisdiction after detecting two cases, but authorities later reversed the decision.
Overseas Chinese tour groups will be suspended from Monday, while domestic trips have already been halted since Friday.
The nationwide death toll rose to 56 after 15 new deaths, most of them in Hubei.
Shanghai on Sunday reported its first death — an 88-year-old man who had pre-existing health problems.
The government says most deaths involved the elderly or people already weakened by pre-existing health conditions.
Fearing a repeat of SARS, China has dramatically scaled back celebrations and travel associated with the New Year holiday, which began Friday, while tourist sites like Beijing’s Forbidden City and a section of the Great Wall have closed as a precaution.
Xi said at a Communist Party leadership meeting on the crisis that China was “faced with the grave situation of an accelerating spread” of the virus, calling for stepped-up prevention.
Measures have been ordered nationwide to detect and isolate people carrying the virus on planes, trains and buses.
In Wuhan, China’s military has dispatched 450 medics, many with experience combating infectious diseases, to help treat patients in the city, many of whom reported hours-long waits at overwhelmed hospitals.
Wuhan is racing to build two makeshift virus-focused field hospitals within a fortnight to ease the pressure. The first could be ready in just over a week.
WITH A REPORT FROM AFP