Valenzuela records first COVID-19 patient

MANILA, Philippines — Valenzuela City has recorded its first case of a patient testing positive for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). 

Mayor Rex Gatchalian yesterday confirmed that a 34-year-old female patient went to a private hospital in Manila for sore throat and fever and tested positive for the flu virus.

The patient has no travel history but was exposed to a person who had traveled to Malaysia.

The patient was placed under home quarantine and being monitored by the city’s epidemiology and surveillance unit, Gatchalian said.

“As per Department of Health standards so as not to overload our hospitals which are already overloaded as it is, all positive case with mild symptoms like this case are for home quarantine,” Gatchalian said on Twitter.

The city hall has also set up modular tents and military cot beds at the Valenzuela City Astrodome and disinfected the drug rehabilitation facility Balai Banyuhay, both of which will serve as isolation centers in the city.

The city hall will also give food vouchers worth P500 to P700 to 75,000 indigent families to last a week as relief during the quarantine, Gatchalian said in a television interview.

Each voucher will have different dates, time, and grocery stores for pickup so that residents would not converge at the same time in a single venue, Gatchalian added.

The Navotas City government, meanwhile, would give relief packs containing five kilos of rice, and cans of sardines, corned beef, tuna, meat loaf, and luncheon meat to 12,000 households, Mayor Toby Tiangco said.

Instead of requiring constituents to go to city hall, the indigent residents would receive the relief items at the schools while practicing social distancing, Tiangco added.

In Caloocan, the city social welfare and development department prepared 500,000 grocery packs containing rice and canned goods for distribution to indigent residents, Mayor Oscar Malapitan said.

The city government would also release the midyear bonuses of its employees to augment their needs during the quarantine, Malapitan added.

The Malabon City government would distribute hot meals to 16,000 indigent families under its feeding program “Karinderya para sa Kalusugan ni Chikiting (KKC)” that was repurposed for a barangay-wide feeding program, Mayor Antolin Oreta III said.

The meals would be prepared by partner carinderias and distributed door-to-door in compliance with social distancing measures, Oreta added.

Oreta said he would also give grocery bags to 10,000 indigent families, as well as hygiene kits to senior citizens and protective equipment to the city’s frontliners.