CAGAYAN DE ORO (MindaNews / 04 May) — The entire staff and eight patients of the surgical ward of the Northern Mindanao Medical Center (NMMC) are now under isolation after a 21-year-old male patient tested positive for COVID-19.
Aside from the 31 medical staff or the NMMC surgery ward and the patients, authorities also placed under isolation an entire team of the Cagayan de Oro Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) after they responded to a vehicular accident involving the patient.
Dr. Bernard Ochoa, NMMC medical specialist, said the patient, a resident of Grand Europa Subdivision, was admitted at the hospital on April 19 after figuring in a motorcycle accident.
He said a USAR team brought him to the NMMC where he underwent surgery for his injuries.
Ochoa said the relatives of the patient transferred him to a private hospital where doctors ordered a swab test when he developed pneumonia.
He said the laboratory results were released on Friday, confirming the patient tested positive.
According to Ochoa, the patient was transferred back to the NMMC, the referral center for COVID-19 cases in Northern Mindanao, last Saturday.
He said eight patients at the surgical intensive care unit of the NMMC, where the COVID-19 patient was brought after surgery, were transferred to the hospital’s anti-COVID-19 ward.
The 21-year-old patient is the fourth COVID-19 case in Cagayan de Oro who is presently confined at the hospital.
Region 10 or Northern Mindanao, which includes Cagayan de Oro City, has a total of 14 cases, four of them in Cagayan de Oro. (Froilan Gallardo / MindaNews)
