CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – Forty-four overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) from Central Luzon who were put in the government’s watch list for the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome- Corona Virus (MERSCoV) have been allowed to move freely after tests indicated they did not contract the ailment from another passenger who arrived with them in the same aircraft last April 15.
Dr. Jessie Fantone, chief epidiomologist of the Department of Health (DOH) in Central Luzon, said in a telephone interview, however, that six of the 50 Central Luzon folk who were in the aircraft have not been tracked down and apparently were in other parts of the country.
The Philippine National Police (PNP) had initially told its personnel to “employ reasonable force” and take precautions in assisting the DOH in tracking down 251 passengers of Etihad Airways flight number EY 424 which boarded an OFW from the Bicol region who tested positive for MERS-CoV in the Middle East. The same passenger, however, tested negative when he arrived in the country.
The PNP had ordered mandatory quarantine operations for the passengers in accordance with Quarantine Law of 2004. But Fantone admitted that the DOH was not able to enforce mandatory quarantine on the 50 Central Luzon folk amid the refusal of some of them.
“Some were just made to sign a waiver and told to isolate themselves until they are cleared by the tests on their swab samples from their throats,” he noted. He said that 44 of the passengers from this region had already been informed on the negative results on the tests on their swab samples which were brought to the DOH’s Regional Institute for Tropical Medicine.
“But six of the 50 could not be located up to this time,” he said. Central Luzon police director Chief Supt. Raul Petrasanta said Central Luzon folk who were on Etihad Flight EY 0424 from the United Arab Emirates included two from Aurora, five from Bataan, 16 from Bulacan, eight from Nueva Ecija, 13 from Pampanga, three from Tarlac, two from Zambales and one from Olongapo City.
Fantone said that while the gestation period of the MERS-CoV is from 14 to 15 days before symptoms manifest,
the presence of the virus could be determined anytime in the body’s fluids. “It takes only 48 hours for the RITM to determine the virus from samples of body juices,” he noted.
Fantone said thatapparently, “the MERSCoV cannot adapt to our Philippine settings, although it is also hot in
the Middle East.”
