Bacolod City mayor Evelio Leonardia ordered the implementation of localized containment measures or a surgical lockdown in barangays Sum-ag and Banago after two resident tested for the Delta variant.
Leonardia said on Friday, August 13, that the City Mayor's Office and the Emergency Operations Center – Task Force received confirmation from the Department of Health regarding the result of the genome sequencing conducted by the Philippine Genome Center.
"It is very unfortunate that this development came about at a time when our coronavirus infections are on a steady decline the past two weeks and our vaccination rollout is going full swing," Leonardia said in a statement.
"These are challenging times, indeed, as COVID-19 spread remains unpredictable as experienced also anywhere in the world," he added.
Leonardia identified one of the infected persons as a 71-year-old male resident of Barangay Banago, who underwent a swab test on July 15, but do not exhibit symptoms of the respiratory illness.
The local chief executive confirmed that five family members of the infected resident have tested positive for COVID-19 after undergoing reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests, and exhibited mild symptoms related to COVID-19.
The second confirmed Delta variant case, meanwhile, is a 32 -year old pregnant woman from Barangay Sum-ag.
"She was swabbed on July 19, 2021 as a requirement for pregnant women at 36 weeks of pregnancy onwards. She has no travel history. She is also asymptomatic," Leonardia explained.
The mayor also said that the husband of the infected woman works at a local hospital and his RT-PCR test produced negative COVID-19 results.
Leonardia mentioned that the husband has completed his two doses of Coronavac, the COVID-19 vaccine made by the Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech.
Leonardia assured the public that the medical team of the city conducted extensive contact tracing efforts, and repeat swab tests.
"Immediately after news broke out this evening, the EOC and its pool of medical experts and yours truly buckled down to work until late evening to, among others, execute an action plan and identify interventions on how to arrest the problem," Leonardia said.
