House intensifies health protocols with COVID-19 variants confirmed in Philippines
MANILA, Philippines — With the new coronavirus variant confirmed in the Philippines, the House of Representatives is looking at stricter enforcement of health and safety protocols, it said Sunday.
In a statement, the lower chamber said that the detection of the COVID-19 variant in the country, feared to be more transmissible than its predecessor, prompted House Speaker Lord Allan Velasco to order a stricter enforcement of health and safety protocols within the Batasang Pambansa Complex in Quezon City.
RELATED: DOH: COVID-19 variant not seen from samples in latest genome sequencing | Philippines confirms first case of new COVID-19 variant
This comes days after the Department of Health confirmed domestic transmission of the new and more infectious COVID-19 variant first reported in the United Kingdom.
“Coronavirus cases in the House have been brought down quite remarkably but because of the new strain, we cannot be complacent,” House Secretary General Mark Llandro Mendoza said in the statement.
Mendoza also reported that some 34 employees tested positive for the pathogen out of the 2,848 who went through the RT-PCRs test during the second battery of mass testing from January 18 to 27, most of whom were asymptomatic. It is not clear how many mild, severe or critical cases were recorded.
In contrast, 98 out of around 2,000 House personnel were found to be positive for coronavirus during the first mass testing conducted in November, all of whom have since recovered.
“This is equivalent to a positivity rate of only 1.19 percent, which is way below the 5 percent positivity rate recorded during the first mass testing,” Mendoza said.
“Throughout the testing period, we were coordinating closely with our Barangay Health Emergency Response Team and followed DOH protocols,” he also said, adding that all those who tested positive were brought to isolation facilities to avoid possible transmission and immediate tracing of their close contacts was conducted.
Within the Batasan complex, visitors are required to present a negative COVID-19 test result before they are allowed to access the offices inside. Anyone entering the House is also required to wear masks and face shields, pass through thermal scanners and disinfection machines, and observe physical distancing at all times.
"House members, employees, and guests are also required to submit an accomplished health declaration form to inform the chamber of their health status before being allowed entry into the premises. Cleaning and disinfection of all offices and buildings within the complex are done on a daily basis," the statement read.
As of the health department's latest case bulletin on Saturday afternoon, exactly 523,516 coronavirus cases have been recorded in the country since the virus first emerged in December 2019.
It has been 320 days since the enhanced community quarantine was first hoisted. The Philippines is under the world's longest lockdown.
— Franco Luna with a report from Xave Gregorio
- Latest
- Trending
