Filipina domestic helper released from quarantine

The Philippine Consulate General said on Feb.7 that the first Filipina domestic helper who was quarantined amid the novel coronavirus scare (2019-nCoV) in Hong Kong has been released.

“The first Filipina domestic helper quarantined has been given a clean bill of health and therefore has been released by the Health Department,” Consul General Raly Tejada said.

Tejada added she is now back in her employer’s home, which has been sanitized by health authorities.

The domestic helper has been made to undergo a a 14-day quarantine since Jan.25 after her employer’s parents tested positive for 2019-nCoV. She was sent to the Lady  MacLehose Holiday Village in Sai Kung.

The employer’s parents, a 62-year-old woman and 63-year-old man went to Hong Kong via the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link on the evening of Jan.22, hours before Wuhan, a city in central China, was put on lockdown. They were admitted for isolation at the Prince of Wales Hospital after the woman developed fever and her husband had cough the following day.

The second Filipina domestic helper who was quarantined, on the other hand, remains asymptomatic, Tejada said.

The domestic helper has to be quarantined as her employer, a 72-year-old woman, tested positive for 2019-nCov despite not having been to mainland China recently. They lived in Block 1, Site 11, Whampoa Garden. The employer has been transferred to Princess Margaret Hospital.