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DOH: No community spread of UK variant

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DESPITE the country’s having recorded a total of 44 B117 or UK variant cases, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire maintained on Monday that there is still no community transmission in the country.

Vergeire, meanwhile, disclosed that one of the reported 19 additional UK variant cases was linked to an employee of the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) 3.

The Department of Health (DOH) official said the child of a 46-year-old mother is working in the MRT. Her child tested positive for Covid.

Despite the additional cases positive for UK variant, Vergeire said there is still no evidence to confirm an ongoing community transmission.

“The samples that we get are still not at that level that we can say [and] can already provide us with that predictive factor for community transmission,” Vergeire said.

She also said that due to different airline protocols, they encountered logistical issues for the samples that were scheduled to be sequenced coming from the provinces.

The DOH, she said, has already coordinated with the Office of Civil Defense to help them deliver the samples to the University of the Philippines-Philippine Genome Center (UP-PGC).

The Covid cases in the country surged to 550,860 as of February 15. On Friday, 19 additional Covid-19 cases positive for the UK variant were detected.

The DOH said the UP-PGC, and the UP-National Institutes of Health (UP-NIH) have also confirmed that no other variant of concern was detected, and 60 samples from Region 7 fitting sequencing criteria were negative for the UK variant.

The 19 additional cases were part of the sixth batch of 718 samples sequenced by the UP-PGC on February 8, 2021.

The sixth batch of samples were sourced from all regions, except BARMM, and were selected to ensure representation of each region as well as areas where spikes in cases have been reported.

Three of the 19 cases have indicated current addresses in Region 11: one 10-year-old male, one 54- year-old female, and one 33-year-old male.

All three cases currently do not have any known link to each other. These cases are currently active with mild symptoms.

Two cases have indicated addresses in Calabarzon. One is a recovered 20-year-old female who was swabbed last December 22, 2020 and has unknown exposure.

The other case is a 76-year-old female with exposure to a positive case last January 21, and is currently experiencing mild symptoms.

Eight of these cases are Returning Overseas Filipinos (ROF) who were tested at different ROF catchment laboratories. Four of them are males while four are females, all aged between 28 and 53 years old.

Six of the additional ROF cases are currently being managed in ROF isolation facilities, while two cases have been tagged as recovered.

Lastly, six cases are currently being verified as to whether these are local cases or ROFs.

Case investigation and contact tracing shall also immediately be initiated by the DOH through the Centers for Health Development and regional epidemiology and surveillance units (RESU), in close coordination with concerned LGU local health offices, local epidemiology and surveillance units, and law enforcement.

The DOH acknowledged the help of the UP-PGC, UP-NIH, RESUs, and laboratories in the conduct of biosurveillance, and the National Bureau of Investigation in locating reported cases and their contacts.

Read full article on BusinessMirror

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