2 children first Delta cases in Lanao del Sur
MARAWI CITY—Two children from Cagayan de Oro City were counted as the first cases of the Delta variant of the coronavirus in Lanao del Sur province.
In an advisory, the Integrated Provincial Health Office (Ipho) said they were recently informed by the Bangsamoro health ministry that the Philippine Genome Center confirmed that the infection of both children were of the Delta variant, based on a genome sequencing done on their swab samples.
Although they live in Barangay Balulang of Cagayan de Oro City, the patients belong to Maranao families, hence they were sent to the Amai Pakpak Medical Center (APMC) in Marawi for medical attention.
The first patient is a 1-yearold boy who was afflicted with on-and-off fever. He was declared to have recovered from the disease and was discharged on July 29, the report said.
Health authorities here have yet to disclose how and from whom the boy acquired the COVID-19 virus as the back tracing of the persons the boy had come in contact with was still ongoing.
The boy is currently staying in an isolation facility in Tangkal town, Lanao del Norte province, where he was brought at the request of his family after the genome sequencing result came out.
Close contact
The second patient is a 6-yearold girl who was a close contact of the first patient. Because she showed no symptoms, the girl was advised to undergo home quarantine, which was already completed prior to the release of the genome sequencing result.
The Ipho said extensive contact tracing was done among the patients’ close contacts to ensure the timely isolation of those exposed to them.
The APMC announced on Thursday that the hospital’s critical care utilization rate has reached 90 percent after it was swamped with patients from nearby provinces.
The APMC increased its COVID-19 beds to 140 in June but as of Aug. 19, the hospital was already attending to 65 COVID-19 patients in critical condition, said hospital chief Dr. Shalimar Rakiin.