A patient under investigation (PUI) for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) died Wednesday afternoon at Dagupan’s Region I Medical Center in Pangasinan.
Prior to this, Pangasinan has not even reported a single resident positive of COVID-19 although it has recorded 32,358 persons under monitoring (PUMs) as reported by the Provincial Health Office (PHO).
PHO officer Anna de Guzman said the victim, a 68-year-old female from Rosales town, manifested respiratory tract infection symptoms, such as colds, cough and fever. She was brought to a private hospital in Urdaneta City and later transferred to the Region I Medical Center when the medical staff knew that she traveled from the United States.
While they were waiting for the result of the laboratory test from the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM), the patient died after less than 24 hours.
Usually the test takes 48 hours but de Guzman said “There is a delay in the laboratory test results because of the volume of swab samples being tested at the RITM”.
The latest COVID-19 tracker of the Department of Health has not even listed a single confirmed case under Region I Medical Center.Before this death, Pangasinan had 534 residents completing quarantine out of the thousands of PUMs while out of 22 patients under investigation (PUIs), 17 are still confined in the hospital as five have already been cleared and discharged. (Jojo Mangahis)