BY DOMINIQUE GABRIEL BAÑAGA
BACOLOD City – A locally stranded individual’s (LSI) attempt to escape quarantine in Cebu failed.
The 59-year-old Oliver Oberes was intercepted in the town of Calatrava in Negros Occidental after four days of paddling his small boat.
According to the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), Oberes – resident of Calatrava – originated from the town of Argao in Cebu and was desperate to go home to reunite with his family.
Oberes used an “unmarked’ motorized banca and left Cebu sometime around Monday. The LSI then paddled his boat for four days, until he reached the area of Barangay Lemery in Calatrava town late Friday night, where he was intercepted by the PCG personnel.
Oberes was immediately brought to the town’s quarantine facility to undergo the 14-day quarantine. He would also be subjected reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction testing to find out if he was infected with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
The travel of LSIs coming from and going to Cebu City has been temporarily banned amid the rising cases of COVID-19 there.
The Department of Health considered Cebu City as a critical COVID-19 zone as the country logged for the third time the daily number of virus cases soared past 1,000.
On Friday, there were 1,006 confirmed cases, raising the total to 34,073.
COVID-19 is the infectious disease caused by the most recently discovered coronavirus. This new virus and disease were unknown before the outbreak began in Wuhan, China in December 2019.
The disease can spread from person to person through small droplets from the nose or mouth which are spread when a person with COVID-19 coughs or exhales.
These droplets also land on objects and surfaces around the person. Other people then catch COVID-19 by touching these objects or surfaces, then touching their eyes, nose or mouth.
The most common symptoms of COVID-19 are fever, tiredness, and dry cough./PN
