The Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional (CLMMRH) here is maintaining strict infection protocols to ensure that its healthcare workers are protected from the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).
This was assured by Dr. Julius Drilon, medical center chief, on Thursday after it was confirmed that the 69-year-old patient brought to their facility has tested positive almost three weeks after he passed away.
“The CLMMRH assures the public that the hospital observes and adheres to strict infection protocols to protect its healthcare workers from acquiring the infection,” Drilon said in a statement.
“We appeal to the public not to discriminate healthcare workers as we continue to serve the people in this challenging time,” he added.
Drilon also said one of the personnel who attended to the patient has a reactive result to the rapid Covid-19 anti-body test.
“But this does not confirm that the healthcare worker is Covid-19 positive until the nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swab test will turn out positive,” he said.
As part of protocol, all healthcare workers involved in the management of the patient underwent quarantine, rapid testing, and swabs for confirmatory reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing.
Some 13 healthcare workers who had exposure to the patients were swabbed by the personnel of the City Health Office.
According to the statement issued by Mayor Evelio Leonardia, the patient’s body was wrapped in white impermeable plastic with tape all over it and labeled as “infectious”.
The body was kept in the hospital morgue overnight and was no longer brought to the patient’s residence. Staff of a funeral home took the remains from the hospital and brought it to the cemetery for immediate burial.
The city’s first Covid-19 fatality was a 62-year-old female patient who died on March 31.
She was a close contact of Patient No. 7, a 40-year-old male, confined in the isolation facility of a hospital in Bacolod.
The two recorded mortalities in Bacolod are among the eight positive cases in the city. (Nanette Guadalquiver ndb via pna)
