La Trinidad, Benguet – The municipal inter-agency task force for the management of emerging infectious diseases will be strictly implementing the no-home quarantine and isolation for asymptomatic Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients to avoid the increase in the clustering of cases among family members.
Mayor Romeo K. Salda stated that the municipal government is doing its best to look for other suitable isolation facilities to accommodate the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in the municipality and to ensure that even asymptomatic individuals who test positive of the deadly virus will be isolated in existing temporary treatment and monitoring facilities or isolation centers.
He claimed that the decision of the local task force to impose the facility-based quarantine or isolation was an offshoot of the discovered clustering of cases among family members of confirmed COVID-19 cases who were required to go on home isolation over the past several weeks.
According to him, the local government does not want a repeat of these instances so as much as possible, there will be no longer home isolation for asymptomatic, except in extraordinary cases as per evaluation by the health authorities.
For the past several days, he admitted there had been a significant increase in the number of residents that are positive with the virus that is why health authorities do not want that there will be unnecessary spread of the virus among families of individuals that have tested positive, thus, the need for the patients to undergo facility-based isolation.
On the other hand, for those who need to really undergo home isolation, he explained that they must be able to pass the criteria aside from the fact that their residences should be able to meet the standards of home isolation to avoid the unnecessary spread of the virus among the members of their families. (Joseph Manzano, RPN DZBS Baguio OIC)