COVID-19 claims Carcar City boy: Question remains on where he got the virus?

CEBU CITY, Philippines — The City of Carcar and the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) have issued conflicting claims as to the source of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection that recently killed a 17-year-old boy.

The boy, who was also a kidney patient, was admitted at the VSMMC late-night on April 23.  He was reported to have died from the infection less than two days later.

Read: 17-year-old kidney patient from Carcar City dies of COVID-19

Governor Gwendolyn Garcia announced on Monday afternoon, April 27, 2020, that Carcar City already recorded its first case of the dreaded infection.

But LGU Carcar posted on its official Facebook page Monday night that there is a “big possibility” that the patient contracted the disease while he was admitted at the hospital.

“He was admitted at Vicente Sotto [Hospital] and was placed in the SARI (Severe Acute Respiratory Illness) Ward where the COVID positive patients from Cebu City Jail are also admitted,” Carcar City said in a Facebook post.

Dr. Gerardo Aquino, VSMMC chief, denied that the 17-year-old patient was made to stay in a ward that was also occupied by COVID-19 patients coming from the Cebu City Jail.

“Please note that the subject is a pediatric patient, he was not mixed with the Cebu City Jail patients because the latter were adults,” Aquino said in a statement which he released on Tuesday, April 28.

According to the hospital chief, the boy was brought to the hospital’s Emergency Isolation Department at about 11:58 p.m. on Thursday, April 23.  He was made to undergo COVID-19 swab testing a few minutes later or at around midnight on April 24.

The patient was officially admitted to the hospital at 2:54 a.m. on April 24 and was brought to the pediatric SARI ward which he shared with four others who were tested negative for the virus.

Hospital officials said the boy died on April 25 or two days before his swab test result was released on April 27.

Aquino refuted the claims of the LGU that the swab testing of the boy was conducted only after his death. The chief doctor said swab samples were taken upon admission as part of their strict protocols.

He also debunked the statement of the Carcar City LGU which said that there is less chance that the boy got the virus in the hinterland community where he came from.

“Even those living in mountain areas are possible for contracting COVID-19. We have those patients in the medical center. In fact, the medical center and the Department of Health wondered why this happened,” Aquino said.

Aquino added that with the current health crisis, “blame, discrimination, and stigma are not the actions that we need.”

He also gave the assurance that they are implementing infection control protocols in the hospital considering that VSMMC caters to COVID-19 patients. / dcb