Kin of COVID-19 casualty encourages loved ones of confirmed cases

The daughter of Nida Paqueo, the 67-year-old mother who became the first Filipino to succumb to COVID-19, has some words of encouragement to the loved ones of coronavirus-positive patients.

According to JP Soriano's report on "24 Oras", Liza Paqueo called on persons who may have been exposed to the disease to be responsible and isolate themselves.

"You need to be a strong advocate of your health and the health of your loved one who’s suffering. You have to know that you aren’t alone in all this," Liza Paqueo said.

Liza said their family wanted to be with their 72-year-old father who's also in a hospital, ill with COVID-19.

She said all her loved ones agreed that they had to consider "the greatest good."

“We want to be with our father right now and to hold a memorial for our mother,"Liza said.

"We are all in agreement that we have to be thinking logically and what’s most responsible for the greatest good and I think that my mother would feel the same way,” she added

The Philippines has so far recorded 202 infections and 17 deaths due to COVID-19.

Liza said Nida was a loving grandmother to her two children.

“They were inconsolable. One son cried himself to sleep and the other just kept looking at the pictures of him and his grandmother. So it was really difficult,” Liza said.

“A person isn't a statistic. They have feelings, they feel pain, they suffer, and this disease is brutal.”

Nida became the first Filipino COVID-19 fatality on March 11. She was also the second COVID-19-related death recorded in the Philippines.

In an earlier Facebook post, Liza lamented the death of her mother, who “died alone without her loving family and friends around her.” -Julia Mari Ornedo/NB, GMA News