The Department of Health in the Philippines said that one more case of the more transmissible South African COVID-19 variant has been detected in Pasay City.

“Anim po lahat, apat dito ay galing sa mga residente galing sa Pasay City at dalawa po ay mga returning overseas Filipinos galing pong UAE and Qatar,” DOH Epidemiology Bureau director Alethea De Guzman said in a virtual briefing.

The Pasay cases include a 61-year-old female, a 39-year-old male, and a 40-year-old male according to a report of DOH.

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One of the cases was previously under investigation if he or she is a local resident or a returning overseas Filipino.

Due to the confirmation of the more transmissible variant, the DOH said that Passat is now under ‘critical risk’.

As of March 2, Pasay has logged 12,452 cases with 10,616 recoveries and 168 deaths as of March 2, with 91% of its barangays affected by COVID-19.

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“What’s really good about Pasay is they have instituted a lot of actions already. Number one, stricter na lockdowns. It’s now barangay-wide lockdowns, and ikalawa po ‘yung active case finding… [at] pag-e-ensure na ang cases po nila ay nata-transfer to an isolation facility para po ma-minimize na ‘yung transmission,” the DOH said.

The presence of the South African variant in Pasay now leads DOH to conduct a special run of its genome sequencing in the entire Metro Manila region.

“We want to see if this variant will also be detected in other cities in Metro Manila. So we’ll run a specific run in Metro Manila to determine the extent. We are going to run about 140 specimens for this special run.,” the DOH said. (TDT)

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