DAGUPAN CITY, Aug 11 (PIA ) - - The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA)-Region I  issued an official statement about an internal letter addressed to the Department of Health (DOH), which apparently, was leaked. 

OWWA Regional Director Gerardo Rimorin said the letter was not supposed to go on public and the office is investigating on how it was leaked. 

Rimorin said the  letter was meant to seek help from the department for the reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests of their co-workers who were exposed to a ‘positive recovered’ overseas Fillipino worker (OFW) and for the contact tracing of his co-passengers inside the bus that brought them to Pangasinan,  as part of the management of returning Filipinos and Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) protocols. 

It also contains the  name of the OFW seafarer  who was ‘positive recovered’. The result of the Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) later on revealed that the variant that infected him was a Delta variant’. 

The letter also indicated the receiving towns of the 14 passengers from Pangasinan and the names of OWWA personnel who assisted them. 

Director Rimorin said the public must not be alarmed as this was  immediately acted upon by DOH. 

“Nais naming ipagbigay alam na ang sino mang nagpapakalat ng natureng dokumento ay maaring managot sa batas sa ilalim ng Republic Act 10173 o Data Privacy Act of 2012,” Rimorin said in the statement. 

Consequently. the local government unit of  Natividad, Pangasinan, as it was the town named in the leaked letter where the seafarer went home to, also issued a statement to pacify the public.

Mayor Rosita Rafael said the male OFW seafarer has arrived on 3 August in Pangasinan with complete documents including a quarantine certificate from the Bureau of Quarantine which states that he has clinically recovered from COVID-19 after almost four weeks of quarantine. 

The OFW has gone home before the result of WGS revealed that what infected him was a Delta variant. As of now, the seafarer is under strict home quarantine and shows no symptoms of the virus. Nonetheless, all his house mates are placed under quarantine in a PUI facility, the statement said. 

Provincial Health Officer Dr. Anna Teresa De Guzman, said PHO immediately located the seafarer as soon it received advise from DOH about the WGS result. 

De Guzman said the patient and his family were advised to immediately isolate and take the RT-PCR test to determine if they are positive or negative of the virus.

Contact tracing has also been done to the 13 other passengers of the bus where they rode and who all went home to various towns of Pangasinan.  

Meanwhile, Regional Task Force COVID 19 Strategic Communications Custer Head Jennilyne Role of the Philippine Information Agency, appealed to the public to remain calm and refrain from sharing the letter to avoid panic. 

“In this time of crisis, we appeal for sound judgement before sharing anything, especially online,” Role said. (JCR/VHS/PIA Pangasinan)