Mountain Province records 1st coronavirus case

BAGUIO, Philippines – Mountain Province ended its reign as the last Cordillera province standing as it finally recorded its first coronavirus case on Tuesday afternoon, June 16.

Mountain Province Governor Bonifacio Lacwasan Jr said that a man from Suquib, Besao, tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Lacwasan said that contact tracing has started, and the swab samples of all 22 contacts of the man have been collected for RT-PCR testing.

Lacwasan said that the man is a close contact of Special Action Force member PCapt Bonifacio Dulag who tested positive last June 12. Besao residents said that the new case is the younger brother of Dulag.

But it was PCapt Dulag’s movement throughout which is causing a provincial headache.

As per Dulag’s story, he was supposed to be on a mission order when he went to his hometown in Besao last June 6 and apparently slept in their house. With his father and brothers, he went to Toyakpa village on June 7, went back to Suquib, and in the afternoon, returned to his barracks at Camp Molintas in Buguias, Benguet, the nearest town to Mountain Province.

Per the governor’s report, one of those he visited in Suquib was Mountain Province’s first coronavirus case.

But Dulag’s operations did not end there. On June 10, he was one of those who conducted marijuana operations in Patay, Sagada, where they seized and burned about 800 marijuana plants.

On June 11, he was among the security detail for the helicopter trip of Besao elder Anne Tauli to Camp Dangwa in Benguet, though he stayed in the Besao-Sagada boundary. 

On June 12, he learned that his swab test taken on June 8 yielded a positive result. He insisted that he was asymptomatic. He is 1 of 3 Philippine National Police personnel in Buguias who tested positive.

Dulag is now at the Benguet General Hospital.

As of Tuesday, the Philippines has 26,781 coronavirus cases, with 1,103 deaths and 6,552 recoveries. – Rappler.com