ALL THOSE who would test positive for COVID-19 from among the 405 individuals that the Bangsamoro government rescued from Cagayan de Oro City last week shall be confined for treatment in the regional government’s facility in Maguindanao.
The 405 locally stranded individuals who arrived in Mindanao from Metro Manila via Cagayan de Oro City are confined since last week at the Bangsamoro government’s COVID-19 hospital in Sultan Kudarat, about eight kilometers north of Cotabato City.
Naguib Sinarimbo, local government minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, told Mindanao Cross this week a big number of the LSIs have been infected with COVID-19, citing that by Tuesday this week, 79 of them already tested positive for the disease.
More than 30 more tested positive by Wednesday, July 15, according to BARMM officials.
Sixty-nine of the LSIs supposedly returning to Basilan are infected with coronavirus.
No fewer than 300 of the 405 SLIs now being attended to by BARMM’s Rapid Emergency Action on Disaster Incidence, or READI contingent, and the region’s health ministry are residents of Basilan province.
The READI contingent is operating under the supervision of Sinarimbo, who is also BARMM’s regional spokesperson.
“All of those who tested positive to COVID-19 shall not be discharged from the facility yet,” Sinarimbo said.
He said all of the 405 LSIs the BARMM government brought to Sultan Kudarat from Cagayan de Oro City shall be subjected to COVID-19 testing.
Sinarimbo said only those free from coronavirus infection shall be released from the facility, located in the compound of the Sanitarium Hospital in Pinaring in nearby Sultan Kudarat town.
The chief of the Sanitarium Hospital, physician Ibrahim Pangato, is helping oversee the facility.
All the healthy LSIs shall be ferried to Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi by a Navy watercraft the military Western Mindanao Command is to provide, according to Sinarimbo. (John Felix Unson)
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