COVID-19 positive LSIs to remain in BARMM isolation facility
HEALTH • 11:15 AM Tue Jul 14, 2020
1
By:
John M. Unson
One of the buses that brought LSIs from Cagayan to Maguidanao. (Photo from Minister Sinarimbo)
COTABATO CITY --- All 79 from among a group of 406 Bangsamoro residents returning to their island provinces positive to COVID-19 shall remain in an isolation facility in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao.
The 406 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, said Tuesday the 79 SLIs infected with coronavirus shall remain in the facility for treatment.
No fewer than 300 of the 406 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 406 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 area in nearby Sultan Kudarat town.
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.