By HERBIE GOMEZ
Editor in chief
with JIGGER J. JERUSALEM
Correspondent
TWO family members of the man who died of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease at the Northern Mindanao Medical Center (NMMC) here on Friday night have been prevented from leaving the state-run regional hospital where they insisted on watching over the dying patient while he was in isolation since he was brought there from Iligan City two Sundays ago.
Officials said this even as the head of the regional hospital revealed that some 50 NMMC health workers, many of whom have been serving as front liners in the efforts to contain the Wuhan virus, were in the list of those advised to go on home quarantine.
Asked if this meant the hospital would become understaffed, NMMC chief Dr. Jose Chan replied: “Puwede.”
As of Friday, Patient 40’s wife and daughter have not shown symptoms of the Covid-19. They reportedly asked that they be allowed to leave the hospital and go home.
The Covid-19 patient died of acute respiratory distress syndrome and severe pneumonia. The 54-year-old man was the first Filipino, who contracted the virus locally, to die of the deadly Wuhan disease in Mindanao — he fell ill in February while he was in Pasig City.
His condition had turned from bad to worse since he was moved to the state-run NMMC from an Iligan City hospital on March 8. From March 3 to March 7, he was treated like a patient who had community-acquired pneumonia in the Iligan private hospital until doctors started suspecting it was a Covid-19 case.
His blood pressure had dropped to zero early morning Friday but doctors quickly resuscitated him until his BP normalized later in the day. He died past 9 pm the same day.
Dr. Adriano Suba-an, director of the Department of Health (DOH) in Region 10, said the two relatives of the man from Lanao del Sur, known as Patient No. 40, were to be quarantined because they had direct contact with the Covid-19 carrier.
Dr. Chan said doctors advised those who had been in close contact with Patient 40 to remain in the NMMC even after his death on Friday “especially the wife who stayed at the side of her husband.”
The patient’s wife and a daughter watched over him and, based on NMMC workers’ accounts, even slept inside his isolation room against the initial advice of doctors.
That means the wife and daughter were not supposed to go out even to bury their dead.
“Ang sunod nga paagi niana i-quarantine sila... o isulod gyud sila sa hospital as ‘PUI’ (‘persons under investigation’),” Chan told a news conference on Saturday.
Mayor Oscar Moreno said it was unlikely that Patient 40 has had contacts with anyone outside the NMMC in the city, except for members of his family who watched over him while in the hospital.
“Walay first-generation contact dinhi sa Cagayan,” said Moreno. ”Naa sa airport, naa sa Iligan, we assume...”
Officials allowed the man to be given a Muslim’s burial rather than be cremated.
But the health department prevailed over the request for rituals before interment “like the traditional washing of the body and the attendance of family members during burial,” said Dr. Suba-an.
He said the man’s family agreed but insisted on burying the dead.
“The decision of the family is for burial, not cremation,” Suba-an said.
Meanwhile, Moreno maintained his position that there is no reason for city hall to declare a Cagayan de Oro lockdown despite Metro Manila’s “community quarantine.”
“The reality is, we have no boundaries. We don’t have a community lockdown or quarantine,” he said.
Moreno said Cagayan de Oro cannot bar people from other areas from entering the city.
The city is considered as northern Mindanao’s regional center. All regional offices of the national government are in Cagayan de Oro.
Moreno, however, appealed to people that would come to the city in the future to subject themselves to self-quarantine.
“We strongly urge those coming from Manila, whether by plane, boat, or land, to go on home quarantine,” he said.
