39 active COVID-19 cases in Senate; only 25% of staff may report for work —Sotto

Senate President Vicente Sotto III on Wednesday announced that there are 39 active COVID-19 cases recorded in the upper chamber amid the ongoing surge of infections.

This prompted them to reduce the number of employees allowed to physically report for work from 50% to 25%.

During the Senate’s plenary session Wednesday, Sotto interrupted the lawmakers’ discussion after the Senate Medical and Dental Bureau (MDB) submitted to him a “very urgent memorandum” on the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the chamber.

“Now to date, just for the record, I hope the two senators don’t mind, the MDB recorded a total number of 39 active cases as of today, tonight in the Senate,” Sotto said.

According to the MDB, the majority of the COVID-19 infected employees are from the Senate secretariat.

“One case in point, this is the worse thing, Bills and Index ang sapol [is hit] which is right here,” Sotto said.

“Out of its current manpower of 32 persons, its service chief and 19 staff members, for a total of 20, are now in quarantine. Out of this 20, ten have already tested positive for COVID-19,” he added.

Sotto said the MDB has already directed 168 Senate employees to go into quarantine.

With the “alarming situation” in the chamber, the Senate MBD asked the body to adopt a memorandum it proposed that would:

• reduce the number of Senate employees who report for work on a daily basis from 50 percent to 25 percent, except for officers and staff who are required to be physically present to perform their official functions; and
• allow only those employees with essential functions related to plenary sessions to enter the session hall.

After the adoption of the memorandum, Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri manifested that some of his staff members have contracted COVID-19, and that one of them, who had worked with him for years, had passed away.

“With that revelation, I am now seriously fearful of my own and the staff here, the life of our staff,” he shared.

“I lost a staff member this weekend who’s been working with my family for close to 50 years. Our oldest staff member he passed away getting COVID-19, fully vaccinated with the Sputnik but because of his advanced age, hindi niya nakayanan [he didn’t make it],” he added.

Senator Joel Villanueva also disclosed the demise of one of his members of staff, who had worked with him since the start of his political career over 20 years ago, due to COVID-19.

“It’s good that we lessen the number of people because I still see a lot of staff here in the Senate,” Zubiri said.

“Siguro dito [sa plenary] dapat wala pa tayong 10 lahat lahat na. Marami tayong nandito at ninenerbiyos po ako,” he added.

[Maybe here in the plenary, we must allow only 10 people all in all because I can still see a lot of people here and I am being nervous about our situation.] — BM, GMA News