Governor Bonz Dolor reported a 21-month-old baby was the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Oriental Mindoro province.
Dolor said in a Facebook post that the baby girl who is from Barangay Ilaya in Calapan City, stayed in Alabang in Metro Manila from March 5 to 12, 2020.
“H[er] guardians will be subject to testing as well,” he said.
The governor said the child was brought to a hospital on March 22 due to a high fever. The hospital’s initial assessment was dengue.
The baby was living with her grandparents and cousin in Calapan City.
But since the child was considered an “extreme PUI (person under investigation),” doctors conducted a test on her. The samples were brought to Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) in Muntinlupa City to confirm is she has COVID-19.
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21-month-old baby first COVID-19 cases in Oriental Mindoro
“Sa walong results, siya lang ang positive,” Dolor said.
(Of all eight results, she’s the only positive.)
The seven others who tested negative of the virus were mostly senior citizens with age ranging from 55 to 84 years old.
According to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention data analysis, children get infected as often as adults. However, they tend to have milder symptoms.
In London, even a newborn baby tested positive of the virus a few minutes after being born. The child’s mother only found out that she has COVID-19 after giving birth.
Doctors are uncertain of how the baby acquired the virus.
“We can’t say it happened while the baby was still in the womb,” Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of Preventive Medicine and Infectious Diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, told Live Science.