80% recovery rate: 79 cops healed from COVID-19

CEBU, Philippines —  About 79 more police personnel have recovered from COVID-19 and were released from the Malasakit Recovery Center during their reintegration program yesterday morning, bringing the recovery rate among the PRO-7 cops to 80 percent.

The recovered personnel were the 10th batch that "graduated" from the recovery center in Barangay Tap-Tap, Cebu City.

Police Regional Office-7 Chief Albert Ignatius said there are just about 108 remaining cops that were affected and undergoing treatment, while the total recoveries were now at 420.

“We will just take care of the remaining and, finally, we will have a very small number of policemen being infected,” Ferro told reporters.

Just like with the previous batches, those who recently recovered will take part in the enhanced contact tracing training. Aside from this, they were also encouraged to donate their blood plasma for free and reminded them that selling those is prohibited.

“Maybe by next week, Monday, we are planning to conduct a Makatao, Malasakit plasma donor program in the regional training (center) in Consolacion… this time around, all our survivors will be voluntarily donating their blood plasma for free,” said Ferro.

At present, the PRO-7 now has 100 survivors who are undergoing tests and processing for the blood plasma donation drive.

Among those that were able to recover from the virus was Patrolwoman Rebecca May Gomez, a police trainee, who shared that she was terrified upon knowing that she tested positive in the middle of her training last July 21.

“After the announcement of the result, I was very sad because I was thinking about my family, especially that my birthday will be two days after, July 24…the very first feeling (was) I was worried not with the thought na basin ma-dismiss ko from the training but because of the fact that if my family will know, and they were expecting me to be healthy since I was training,” Gomez said in an interview.

Gomez said she did not show any symptom and was surprised that she had tested positive.

Right after the result of the swab testing, Gomez and the other police trainees who tested positive were immediately transported to the isolation center from the training camp and underwent the 14-day quarantine. Gomez added that their training continued virtually, even during their isolation period.

The PRO-7 is now expecting another batch of recoveries that will be released from the recovery center that would further increase the recovery rate to 90 percent. — GAN (FREEMAN)