4 BARMM personnel afflicted with COVID-19
HEALTH • 08:45 AM Thu Sep 3, 2020
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By:
John M. Unson
The Bangsamoro government center building is temporarily closed for disinfection. (John Unson)
COTABATO CITY --- After Bangsamoro Health Minister Saffrullah Dipatuan have admitted he and his wife were positive of COVID-19, three more employees of another department in the regional government also had the virus.
The two-storey executive building of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in southeast of Cotabato City, where the region’s chief minister, Hadji Ahod Ebrahim, holds office, was shut indefinitely for disinfection.
The office of Dipatuan, a physician, is far from Ebrahim’s office but the BARMM government is not taking chances, regional spokesman Naguib Sinarimbo, who is concurrent local government minister, said Thursday.
Dipatuan, who hails from Lanao del Sur, personally announced late Wednesday that he and his wife had tested positive to COVID-19.
He said they are now both confined in a COVID-19 isolation facility in the Amai Pakpak Hospital in Marawi City, the capital of Lanao del Sur.
There is an alarming prevalence of COVID-19 cases in Marawi City and in Lanao del Sur province that covers 39 towns in two congressional districts.
In a written statement Wednesday, the BARMM government also confirmed that three employees in its Finance, Budget and Management Services Office also got infected with coronavirus.
The office building where the three infected employees work is less than 20 meters behind the BARMM’s executive building.
Sinarimbo said personnel in the office of BARMM’s chief minister shall “work from home” meantime.
He said there shall be no physical transactions meantime in the building where Ebrahim discharges his ministerial leadership of the Bangsamoro region that covers the provinces of Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.