BY GILBERT P. BAYORAN
Provincial Administrator Rayfrando Diaz said yesterday that the three remaining Delta variant-infected residents of Pulupandan, Valladolid, and La Carlota City tested negative in repeat swab tests.
“They will be sent home,” Diaz said.
The 9-year-old boy from Silay City, who was discovered to have been infected by the highly-contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus disease 2019, died on Aug. 2, while the 52-year-old returning overseas Filipino from Talisay City, was declared recovered, after he tested negative in a repeat swab test, he added.
The Department of Health, meanwhile, raised the Covid-19 risk classification of Negros Occidental from low to moderate, and Bacolod City from low to high.
Diaz explained that the upward classification was due to the presence of the highly-infectious Delta variant in the province. “But in terms of hospital occupancy, we are still at low risk,” he said, adding that hospital occupancy ranges from 30 to 40 percent.
Negros Occidental remains under the General Community Quarantine classification until Sept. 7, as announced earlier by Malacañang.
Diaz said that Gov. Eugenio Jose Lacson will issue an executive order to that effect, so that all local government units will be properly guided.
While the province remains under the GCQ, he said that DOH released a lot of results that showed that Negros Occidental has many cases of the Covid-19 variants, such as Delta, Beta, and Theta. The samples were taken first week of August, but after being re-swabbed, those earlier infected yielded negative results, as of Aug. 29.
It caused alarm to some Negrenses, Diaz admitted, but stressed that there was no surge of Covid-19 infections in the province, despite the slight increase in local cases, from 665 as of August 25, to 871 yesterday.
“We cannot really control human activity; in the process, we cannot control the spread of the virus, from one person to another,” he also said.
Just the same, Diaz said the provincial government is ready to immediately conduct testing and contact tracing. “And if we can identify those infected, all our quarantine facilities are ready to assist them until they fully recover,” he added.*
