Health authorities were about to send home five people who recovered from COVID-19, but decided to keep them in isolation and under observation a little longer after it was confirmed that what they contracted was the highly infectious Delta variant.

The discovery of the five Delta variant cases was the reason why Malacañang placed Cagayan de Oro under the strictest enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) classification on Friday, July 16, despite its success in significantly lowering the number of daily COVID-19 cases documented in the city this month.

Dr. Teodulfo Jose Retuya Jr., city epidemiologist, said they made the decision to further hold the patients as soon as the Department of Health (DOH) informed doctors in the city that samples taken from the five showed that they were infected with the Delta variant.

“We are now reviewing their cases, and further observing them,” Retuya said.

The patients were confined in two hospitals in the city, but would be moved to a facility tasked to keep track of Delta variant cases.

Retuya said doctors would also review the patients’ narratives and the lists of people they have been in close contact with.

He said doctors were trying to determine if the patients were infected abroad or if theirs were cases of local transmissions.

Retuya said swab samples taken from the patients were sent to the Philippine Genome Center on June 28.

“The patients were randomly tested, and the five came out to be positive for the new variant,” Retuya said.

Of the 11 “local cases” found by the DOH, five were “part of larger cluster of cases…found to have originated in Cagayan de Oro, and another one in Gingoog City.”

The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) also placed neighboring Gingoog City in Misamis Oriental under ECQ classification, and the province under the less stricter general community quarantine. – Rappler.com