The city government on April 4 started to conduct rapid tests of health workers and Persons under Investigations (PUIs) confined at home with mild Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) symptoms.
This came ahead of the Dept. of Health’s announcement allowing mass testing in the national level.
Mayor Benjamin Magalong on April 2 gave the go signal for the rapid tests after consulting with government health practitioners here to further hasten the identification of those who are infected and facilitate treatment, isolation and contact tracing.
Results are not confirmatory for the tests which utilize test kits donated to the city government by some entities.
PUIs with mild symptoms who would test positive will be subjected to PCR confirmatory tests while those with negative results will be made to continue their 14-day quarantine.
City Health Officer Dr. Rowena Galpo said all 23 PUIs tested April 4 yielded negative results while 36 others who were checked April 6 are still awaiting results.
The city has around 400 donated kits enough to cover all PUIs in home quarantine.
As of April 7, the city has 362 PUIs under home isolation, 16 were admitted in hospitals and 1004 are now completing their 14 day home quarantine.
About 314 individuals were tested negative with the virus
On April 7 Baguio General Hospital & Medical Center personnel led by Medical Center Chief Ricardo Ruñez Jr. send-off two more patients who recovered from COVID-19. They are the Baguio’s sixth and seventh patient to have healed from the virus.
Dr. Ruñez is hopeful that there will be more patient recoveries in the following days.
There are still six patients admitted in the hospital recovering from COVID-19.