BY AARON RECUENCO
General Archie Francisco Gamboa, chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP), has ordered a revision of some of the protocols in police training centers across the country amid reports of mass infection of coronavirus among trainees.
Based on the reports of the PNP Health Service, a total of 183 of the 350 police trainees in a training facility in Lucena City were found positive for coronavirus, the highest infection in the police organization in one area and in the span of 10 days.
Earlier, a total of 70 police trainees also tested positive for coronavirus in the Central Visayas regional police training center in Cebu.
“There will still be a lot of amendments and adjustments that would be done in training facilities… There must be innovations on how to do it and true enough, the NPTI (National Police Training Institute) is adjusting to that required quarantine protocols within the training center,” said Gamboa.
Some of the adjustments made, according to Gamboa, is to limit the number of trainees inside the tent from eight to four; and that there will be no more buffet serving of food in all training centers.
Other adjustments include observance of physical distancing during physical fitness, particularly jogging, and the conduct of online classes so that new instructors would enter any police training facility.
Currently, there were a total of 2,008 policemen infected by the coronavirus—10 of them died while 716 recovered.
Gamboa said he also gave a go signal for the resumption of training inside the PNP Academy after the two new cadets who died early this month were found to have died of medical condition not related to COVID-19. (Aaron Recuenco)
