WHO Philippines: No confirmed 2019-nCoV in the Philippines to date

WHO – Philippines announced that there is no confirmed case of the 2019-nCoV in the country as of January 21, 2020. | PHOTO SCREENGRABBED FROM WHO-PHILIPPINES OFFICIAL FACEBOOK PAGE

CEBU CITY, Philippines -The Philippine bureau of the World Health Organization (WHO – Philippines) has announced that there is no confirmed case of the 2019 novel coronavirus in the Philippines to date.

WHO Philippines released the statement on Tuesday, January 21, after the Department of Health (DOH) disclosed in a press conference earlier that the latter is probing a 5 year-old child from Wuhan City in China, now admitted in a hospital in Cebu City, for testing positive for a non-specific pancorona virus.

“To date, there is no confirmed 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) case in the Philippines,” the WHO Philippines statement read.

The 2019-nCov, also known as the Wuhan coronavirus, is a newly discovered strain of coronavirus that originated in Wuhan City, Hubei province in Central China.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said the 5-year-old Chinese child tested negative for previous known strains of corona viruses — the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-related Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-related Coronavirus (SARS-CoV).

Duque also said they had sent the child’s specimen to a more advance laboratory institution in Australia to determine if the unidentified coronavirus they had found from the patient was a confirmatory match to the 2019-nCov.

“The total number of confirmed cases of 2019-nCoV reported to date is 222 (China: 218, Thailand: 2, Japan: 1, Republic of Korea: 1), including 4 deaths (all in Wuhan, China). The number of people reported with 2019-nCOV in Wuhan, China, includes 15 health care workers,” WHO Philippines stated.

READ MORE: MORE INFO: DOH probes 5-year-old Chinese boy in Cebu City who tested positive of unidentified coronavirus strain

/dbs