Marawi PUI passes away, COVID-19 patient admitted in CRMC
BANGSAMORO NEWS UPDATES • 15:45 PM Tue Mar 17, 2020
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By:
John M. Unson
Commuters stranded due to the lockdown in Cotabato City since dawn Tuesday. (John Unson)
COTABATO CITY --- A person under investigation for COVID-19 died in a hospital in Marawi City Tuesday just as another patient in the Cotabato Regional Medical Center here tested positive to the dreaded disease.
The CRMC is the largest government hospital in central Mindanao, located near the local government center of Cotabato City.
Media outfits in Cotabato City and nearby Maguindanao and North Cotabato provinces received at noontime Tuesday a copy of a statement from the Department of Surgery in the CRMC stating that there is indeed a patient in the hospital who tested positive to coronavirus disease.
Bangsamoro Parliament Member Zia Alonto Adiong, spokesman of the Lanao del Sur provincial Anti-Covid-19 Task Force, said Tuesday the patient who passed away while undergoing treatment at the Amai Pakpak Hospital in Marawi City was one of local missionaries who attended a recent Islamic congregational activity in Malaysia.
Adiong said the patient died even before hospital personnel could have the result of his COVID-19 testing from a laboratory outside of Marawi City, the capital of Lanao del Sur in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Adiong said there are more than 80 Maranaws in different towns in Lanao del Sur now tagged "persons under monitoring" by the Integrated Provincial Health Office. He did not elaborate, however.
“He was admitted at the hospital for flu-like symptoms. He passed away this morning,” Adiong said shortly before noontime Tuesday.
Thousands of commuters and motorists from Maguindanao and North Cotabato provinces were barred by the police and military from entering Cotabato City, whose local government unit ordered a city-wide lockdown since before dawn Tuesday as part of its anti-COVID-19 effort and amid reports that a patient in the CRMC, a Muslim cleric, had tested positive to coronavirus infection.
Only medical personnel of different hospitals and clinics residing in nearby barangays in Maguindanao’s Sultan Kudarat and Datu Odin Sinsuat, in the southern and eastern sides of Cotabato City, respectively, were allowed to get through security checkpoints.