The Department of Health said yesterday that they are currently investigating another suspicious case of the 2019 novel coronavirus in a 36-year-old man in Tacloban City after he manifested respiratory infection.
“Gagawa palang tayo ng screening test. Ngayon suspicious lang naman tayo pero hindi pa tayo umaabot na probable case siya ,” said Health Undersecretary Rolando Enrique Domingo.
Domingo said that the man “has a cough and fever, recently travel to Wuhan, and came home to Tacloban on the 17th of January.”
The Health official said that the man is in stable condition and is isolated in a health facility in Eastern Visayas. The man’s biological sample was sent to the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine in Muntinlupa City for pancoronavirus assay– a screening tool for coronavirus.
So far, Domingo said, the country has two patients under investigation for the coronavirus, including the five-year-old boy from China who recently arrived in Cebu City.
The Health official said that the laboratory test result of the five-year-old boy from China is still for validation. The sample arrived in Australia last Thursday afternoon.
“We received a word from Australia that the sample got there in good condition, intact, and frozen and that they are going to run the test immediately,” he said.
“However, the test really takes at least 24 hours and the problem unfortunately, mukhang long-weekend sa Australia. So it is possible we will be getting the confirmatory test result by Tuesday,” he said. (Analou de Vera)
