CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – The coronavirus disease 2019 – not the vaccine – killed a family of four in Laguindingan, Misamis Oriental.
This was the clarification issued by the Department of Health (DOH) 10 (Northern Mindanao) on Saturday to correct misinformation that Covid-19 jabs caused the death of the four between Aug. 1 to 8.
Dr. David Mendoza, DOH-10's Local Health Support Division head, narrated via Zoom that after the Facebook post of one of the relatives went viral, they sent an investigation team to confirm the claim.
Based on the gathered information, the family members were not inoculated on July 26 because they were feverish during the pre-assessment.
"About 10 in the family, including some neighbors, were infected. The four (who died) showed symptoms related to Covid-19," Mendoza said.
Jasper Kent Ola, the nurse-epidemiologist who supervised the investigation, said the family had a history of visiting a wake in Barangay Patag here and also had a birthday celebration.
The community where the family resides is under granular lockdown because there were still 20 active cases after the deaths occurred.
"The incident of their deaths were successive because of the different infection and incubation periods (of the virus)," Ola said.
However, some relatives of the affected family members sent a message online claiming that their deceased relatives did not visit the wake because it was hard to enter into the city due to the imposition of Enhanced Community Quarantine checkpoints between Misamis Oriental and this city.
The DOH-10 saw the need to answer the Facebook post to eliminate hesitancy on getting vaccinated.
Mendoza said the DOH-10 has mandated all vaccination sites to intensify pre-inoculation procedures.
He also said Northern Mindanao has no cases of deaths related to the vaccine while mild effects after getting the shots are normal.
A senior citizen here was also reported to have died after inoculation but postmortem findings identified the cause of death as other pre-existing conditions.
As of Saturday, Northern Mindanao has surpassed the one-million mark of total vaccinated individuals. (PNA)
