Returning residents of Negros Occidental have been warned against submitting fake documents during arrival to avoid facing charges as the province continues to enforce strict protocols to contain the spread of COVID-19.
Provincial Administrator Rayfrando Diaz II said Thursday, Feb. 4, that the provincial government will pursue criminal cases against those involved, if there is sufficient evidence.
“I hope they will not even attempt to, let’s say, go around the law (or) circumvent health protocols. Again, this is for your own good, good of your family, and of course, your neighbors,” Diaz said in an interview.
The Provincial Legal Office has been investigating various incidents involving alleged violations of protocols by Negrenses arriving from abroad and other parts of the country.
There were reports that some returning residents provided false travel information, submitted fake quarantine papers, and presented fake swab test results.
Diaz reiterated the need for arriving Negrenses to undergo reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction test upon arrival in the province.
“We still need to test them. We still need to double up our testing in case there are those who will be overlooked during the screening in Manila. Here, we can screen them and then isolate them (if they turn out positive),” he said.
Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson earlier stressed the need for swab tests upon arrival after a Negrense couple, who came from the United Kingdom, claimed to be locally-stranded individuals and turned out positive in the province even after undergoing quarantine in Manila.
Swab samples of four Negrenses – the couple who tested positive and two others who came from the US (not British as earlier reported) Virgin Islands and Egypt – were sent to the Department of Health in Manila for the sequencing process at the Philippine Genome Center.
Lacson said the provincial government will take legal action against the two individuals who “misdeclared” themselves as LSIs and report the incident to the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases. – NLG
