THE husband of Omicron case patient who arrived in the country from New York City has been tested positive for Covid-19.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire confirmed the report of the 38-year-old Filipino man tested on the same day as his wife, and both were immediately isolated for 10 days upon the release of the positive result.
The couple arrived in the country aboard a Philippine Airlines flight from New York City on December 10.
Vergeire said the two were released after their isolation period and are now under home quarantine, with a re-test to be done based on current protocols,
In an interview, she told CNN Philippines that the husband was among the contacts who were traced from the patient and who also included other family members who had been in contact with the patient and other passengers during the flight.
“We are still trying to determine the close contacts inside the plane… we are going to define the epidemiological definition of close contacts in riding of the plane, which is four seats in front, four seats beside and four seats at the back,” Vergeire said.
She added that the sample of the husband will be sent to the Philippine Genome Center for sequencing,
Despite the detection of the Omicron variant from a traveler from the United States, Vergeire said the government will not yet place the country from the yellow travel list to the red travel list, as it has not yet reached the metrics of the government under the red list.
According to her, the country continues to prepare its health system capacity amid the continuing threat of a community transmission of the Omicron variant.
“The determination of the detection of Omicron in the community will just be a matter of time, so we are trying to prepare our response so that if and when this is in our community, we will be able to respond well and we’ll be able to manage if ever cases increase,” Vergeire said.
Meanwhile, the National Capital Region (Metro Manila) has shifted from being under “very low risk” to “low risk” based on OCTA Research’s own pandemic metric system, suggesting an increase in the number of cases in the past few days.
Based on its NCR Covid Update released on Tuesday, the average daily number of cases in the region increased to 126 cases per day from December 21 to 27, higher than the 77 per day during the week of December 14 to 20.
