A guest in one of the best hotels in this city inside Camp John Hay tested positive for Covid-19 infection upon her return to Manila.
Guests at the hotel regularly undergo thermal scan screening before entering and the visitor was clear of fever when she checked in on March 9. She had though the early signs of the disease but were not apparent upon entry.
The guest came to attend a seminar of the Government Service Insurance System held at the CAP Convention Center at Camp John Hay and the team had stayed at the hotel from March 9 to 11, occupying several rooms.
The 24-year-old female was already coughing occasionally on March 7 and 8 but had no fever and was, therefore, allowed to travel and join the three-day seminar on the said dates.
She had recently spent time in Hiroshima, Japan from February 16 to 25 and showed no symptoms of the disease upon her return to the Philippines.
Still, given the mandatory 14-day quarantine after coming from a country or area with known cases, she would have been a patient under investigation (PUI) even at the time of travel, especially since she had started coughing two days before the seminar.
She now has the city in jitters as she is said to have roamed around the market and a popular restaurant aside from several eateries inside Camp John Hay.
Upon her return to Manila, her cough became consistent and she was constrained to undergo a medical checkup at the San Juan de Dios Hospital.
The Research Institute for Tropical Medicine on March 15 informed her that she tested positive for the virus, which she then relayed to her mother agency which closed its Pasig and Quezon City offices just as the government imposed a Luzon-wide community quarantine.
The Baguio City Health and Services Office under Dr. Rowena Galpo is now intensifying its contact tracing process.
The hotel where she had stayed in had only six guests still left as of March 16 but its management assured that they have completed sanitation protocol of the hotel and have had their employees under quarantine and instructed to go for testing.
But Mayor Benjamin Magalong, claimed that the city remains Covid-19 free, saying the case was merely transit in nature, even while she was symptomatic and that she is from Parañaque and not a resident of the city.
The Cordillera region has so far one confirmed case for the Covid-19 from Manabo, Abra, who was tested in La Union when he went to fetch his mother who was confined in a hospital there. The 39-year-old overseas foreign worker arrived in the Philippines on March 2 and came down with a fever on March 9 and was confirmed positive on March 14. He was later confined at a hospital in La Union and is reported to be recovering well.