Mayor Sara’s household survives COVID ‘outbreak’

DAVAO CITY – Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio said on Monday, Oct. 25, that 11 out of 17 members of her household tested positive for COVID-19 during the recent outbreak of the virus at her family residence.

Duterte-Carpio, who recently returned from her trip to Cebu over the weekend, told Davao City Disaster Radio (DCDR 87.5) that after their children manifested symptoms and later tested positive, all of them were swabbed.

The mayor, fully immunized with the two doses of Sinopharm, said she was initially among the few who tested negative for the infection but she needed to undergo a re-swabbing after experiencing an “itchy throat,” which yielded a positive result on Oct. 9.

“In fact, I did not think at first that it was COVID. I thought it was just an irritation from using Betadine spray and gargling, which I used to protect myself,” she said.

Days later, she experienced other mild symptoms such as a loss of sense of taste and smell.

She said losing her sense of smell felt disorienting. It was disorienting not being able to sense any scent in the air.

“I contracted COVID-19 because, of course, there are personalities in our residence who are unvaccinated. These are our children. They got sick with COVID-19. We took care of them, everybody took care of them, the adults contracted the infection,” she said, adding that special care must be given to the unvaccinated members of the population. She intimated that some members of her household needed hospital care, one of whom needed oxygen support to breathe. She expressed gratitude to the frontliners, doctors, nurses, and medical technologists for their patience, especially with the children to whom it was difficult to explain why they had to undergo certain tests.

Duterte highlighted the importance of strengthening testing to detect possible outbreaks inside households and isolate those who test positive. “Testing is very important, otherwise you will not be able to segregate the people who are positive because some of them don’t have symptoms from beginning until the end of their isolation,” she said.

Department of Health (DOH)Davao reported 49 new cases in Davao City, bringing the total cases to 52,899 as of Oct. 24, with 2,802 active, 48,429 recovered, and 1,668 deaths.