NEGATIVE. The Department of Health (DOH)-Central Visayas Center for Health Development field office in Cebu City. Sixty of the 70 sample coronavirus specimens submitted by the Department of Health in Central Visayas to the Philippine Genome Center were found negative of B.1.1.7 or UK variant, a health official said on Saturday (Feb. 13, 2021). (PNA file photo by John Rey Saavedra)
CEBU CITY – Sixty of the 70 sample coronavirus specimens submitted by the Department of Health (DOH) in Central Visayas to the Philippine Genome Center (PGC) were found negative of B.1.1.7 or UK variant, a health official said on Saturday.
Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, DOH-7 chief pathologist, said 10 of the 70 samples sent last week for sequencing to determine the strain of severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) were untested “due to some technicalities”.
She, however, said the regional field office of the agency sent 91 more samples to the PGC in Quezon City for another round of genomic sequencing.
The health official, however, said there is a possibility “that there is a local variant (of coronavirus disease 2019) that is not yet identified”.
“It’s still possible we have the UK variant but not yet confirmed as the samples collected. Although these are from the targeted population as I have already stated before, that there is the possibility that we didn’t gather the sample from one infected with the UK variant,” Loreche said.
She said the 60 samples were considered as “community samples”, while six were taken from six returning overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), one from a patient admitted at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) and 24 are community samples gathered by the Gov. Celestino Gallares Memorial Medical Hospital medical health workers.
Loreche, meanwhile, said the DOH-7 is still looking at the people’s continuing movement due to the easing of community quarantine status in Cebu as one of the factors in the spike of Covid-19 cases.
However, she said that the rise in cases may also be the result of aggressive contact tracing in some localities here.
As of now, the two Cebuanos confirmed to have contracted the UK variant are the 54-year-old male from Talisay City, southern Cebu who had travel history from Dubai, United Arab Emirates but has been declared as recovered, while the other one was the 35-year-old male from Liloan, Cebu but was tested in Sta. Ana in Manila and had not returned to Cebu since he was found to be carrying the new strain. (PNA)
