Occidental Mindoro confirms 1st South Africa coronavirus variant case

Occidental Mindoro on Tuesday confirmed its first case of the highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus first identified in South Africa.

In a Facebook post, the provincial government said the patient is a returning overseas Filipino from the Middle East.

The patient first tested positive in the RT-PCR test administered on his arrival in the country. He was declared recovered after undergoing quarantine and passing the discharged criteria of the Department of Health.

However, after genome sequencing, his specimen turned out to be positive for the South Africa variant.

The provincial government said the patient is now under home quarantine and monitoring. He will take another RT-PCR test in the following days.

Moreover, the provincial government said it will conduct contact tracing to prevent the further spread of the variant.

So far, the country has detected 223 B.1.1.7 (UK) variant cases, 152 B.1.351 (South Africa) variant cases, one P.1 (Brazil) variant case, and over 100 P.3 variant vases.

The Philippines on Tuesday registered 5,867 new COVID-19 infections, raising the total tally to 677,653. — DVM, GMA News