BY IME SORNITO and RUBY SILUBRICO
ILOILO City – The regional and city offices of the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) on Macario Peralta Street here were placed on a three-day extreme enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) beginning yesterday. A personnel of BFP-Iloilo City tested positive for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
This 26-year-old female personnel, who had a history of travel to Cebu City, was immediately placed on quarantine, said Chief Inspector Melanie Habawel, city fire marshal.
The fire bureau personnel got stranded in Cebu due to the community quarantine there. She managed to return to Iloilo City only on June 5 and was brought to a downtown hotel for the required 14-day quarantine.
On June 6, the personnel underwent reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test. The result was released just this June 13 around 4 p.m.
The now Patient 144 was taken to the St. Therese-MTCC Hospital, one of the city government’s identified quarantine facilities.
Yesterday Mayor Jerry Treñas issued Executive Order No. 91, Series of 2020 placing the two BFP offices under extreme ECQ.
He said over a hundred BFP personnel were exposed to Patient 144.
“For those who have transactions with our office, we could not accommodate you for now,” said Habawel.
Substations of the BFP in various districts of the city have been put on alert. For the time being, they would be the ones to respond to fire calls.
The three-day extreme ECQ would end on June 20 at 11:59 p.m. unless extended. During this period:
* All BFP regional office and city office personnel on active duty from June 9 onward shall be on 14-day quarantine (home or facility-based).
* The Iloilo City COVID-19 Task Force shall extract specimens from these personnel for testing.
* These personnel must submit themselves to contact tracing procedures.
* The BFP regional and Iloilo City offices should be decontaminated.
According to Fire Inspector Mary Angelie Bolocon, public information officer of BFP Region 6, Patient 144 was subjected to both rapid test and RT-PCR on the same day, June 6, but the result of the rapid test was released much earlier, on June 9.
That same day, Patient 144 cut short her quarantine at the hotel where she was initially taken. She proceeded to the BFP regional office.
After the RT-PCR test result was released on Sunday, June 13, it was when Patient 144 was taken to the St. Therese-MTCC Hospital.
But getting the patient to the hospital was not as easy as it seemed, revealed Mayor Treñas. He criticized BFP-6 for not acting soon enough to turn over the patient to the city government team tasked to bring her to the hospital.
Thus, said the city’s chief executive, he would be filing a complaint against the regional office led by Senior Superintendent Roderick Aguto.
According to the mayor, the city government team was given a runaround for hours on Sunday right after the RT-PCR test result was released at around 4 p.m.
Treñas said he had to seek help from the Department of Interior and Local Government Region 6 and Police Regional Office 6.
It was already around 9 p.m. when BFP was able to produce Patient 144, said Treñas.
Where was Patient 144 between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m.?
“I am a preparing a complaint,” said Treñas.
It would be submitted to the Western Visayas inter-agency task force on COVID-19 and the national task force./PN
