Bontoc: 410 Covid cases, 2 deaths; Mt Prov ‘critical’

BONTOC, Mountain Province – This capital town had a total of 410 Covid-19 with 306 active cases and two deaths as of Jan. 25 even as Mountain Province was categorized the only “critical” province in the country.  

Bontoc Mayor Franklin Odsey, in a social media post, said the UK variant of the coronavirus was detected here with 12 of 35 specimens testing positive for the more communicable variant.
    Odsey, who is now on self-quarantine after contracting the disease last Jan. 15, said, lockdowns in every barangay with Covid-19 positives were still in effect.

Vice mayor Eusebio Kabluyen also tested positive for Covid-19 on Jan. 24.

He urged people who came in contact with him the past 14 days to get in touch with the municipal health office.

The Dept. of Health is looking into the swab test results of eight residents who recently returned here to determine whether they were the sources of the new Covid-19 variant spreading in the town.

Health officials have been figuring out the source of the B117 variant that reached Bontoc and infected 12 residents, said DoH spokesperson Maria Rosario Vergeire.

“Our contact tracing teams saw eight Filipinos who returned to the country and entered Bontoc. We will get their details like their RT-PCR results, so, we can identify if the infection came from them,” Vergeire said in a televised forum.

Bontoc has the highest number of the B117 variant infections in the country, accounting for 12 of the 17 cases. Three children in the mountainous town aged 5, 6, and 10 were among those infected.

Contact tracing teams Cordillera tracked down 615 contacts of the Covid-19 patients, including second and third generation contacts, authorities said.

The DoH earlier said 38 close contacts of Covid-19 patients infected with the new variant have tested positive for Covid-19.

A returning Filipino from the United Kingdom who arrived in the town with his wife on 14 December through a private vehicle after testing negative for Covid-19 was suspected to be the source of the mutated virus in the province.

But Dr. Alethea de Guzman, a medical specialist of the health department’s epidemiology bureau, later said there is still no strong evidence to prove such since the patient was not found with the more infectious variant.

De Guzman, however, said all the 11 other cases are linked to the patient.

The DoH stated earlier this week that the clustering of cases in Barangay Samoki in Bontoc is now considered a local transmission of the more infectious variant in the area, but added it is not a community transmission yet.

The country confirmed its first known case of the B117 variant on 13 January in a 29-year-old real estate agent who returned to the country from Dubai on 7 January.

Residents submitted themselves recently for   RT-PCR testing conducted by the National Task Force Against Covid-19 through the Bases Conversion and Development Authority and Bureau of Fire Protection.

The mass testing   started in Barangays Samoki and Tocucan, followed by   Barangay Bontoc Ili and barangays Poblacion and Caluttit on Jan. 28. Two mass swabbing stations were   set up in Samoki, which is the most affected by COVID among the barangays.

The ACT targeted 5,000 tests in the municipality prioritizing these barangays which have the most number of cases. It is also scheduled in the towns of Sabangan, Sagada and Bauko which have also recorded surge of Covid cases.

The DOH on Jan. 22 announced that 12 of the 16 new cases of the more transmissible Covid 19 UK variant in the   Philippines were from Bontoc.  

Seven were males, and five females with 11 of them were from barangay Samoki.

Nine of the cases recovered while three remained  in  isolation at  a hospital.

The DOH confirmed “local transmission in Bontoc of the B117 variant of SARS-CoV-2 as identified through genomic sequencing.” 

Expanded contact tracing is continuing to track down all persons who had interaction with or exposed to the 12 locals found out with Covid-19 UK variant.

The DOH sent reinforcement team   led by DOH- CAR assistant regional director Amelita Pangilinan composed of contact tracers from CAR, Regions 1, 2 and 3 to help the Bontoc LGU in   tracing up to the third   generation contacts, to suppress further transmission.

The Cordillera regional health office sent contact tracers to Bontoc on Jan. 24.

Pangilinan said four DOH teams from Cordillera and Regions 1, 2 and 3 arrived in this town Jan. 24 and set up an incident command system (ICS) post.

The DOH teams conducted contact tracing and swabbing of test specimen from around 160 individuals, she said.

With some of   the Covid positive cases were third generation contacts of the UK variant cases, contact tracing continues and will be expanded up to three generations of contact of the new confirmed cases, she said.

 Pangilinan said contact tracing and swabbing samples that will turn out positive will be subjected for testing at the Philippine Genome Center to check if these are of the UK variant of Covid – 19.—With PIA reports