Malabon mayor ‘surprised’ on learning Tricia Robredo is Swab Cab doctor

MANILA, Philippines — Malabon Mayor Antolin “Lenlen” Oreta III said he was surprised on learning that Dr. Tricia Robredo, daughter of Vice President Leni Robredo, was the attending physician of the Swab Cab project, which conducted COVID-19 tests in the city on Tuesday.

According to Oreta, he was informed that Tricia Robredo herself was doing COVID-19 tests on probable residents as the Swab Cab returned to his city.

The Swab Cab is a program of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) that seeks to augment COVID-19 testing and prevent further coronavirus transmissions by bringing the testing facility — a retrofitted bus — to areas with high infection rates.

“I was surprised when I learned that Dr. Tricia Robredo was the attending doctor at the Swab Cab earlier,” Oreta said in a Facebook post written in Filipino.

Oreta thanked the vice president and her family for inspiring Malabon residents to get over with this health crisis.

“Dr. Tricia, thank you very much for your efforts, but more than the number of antigen test you conducted today, we are more thankful for the inspiration your family provides,” Oreta said.

“For us to overcome this pandemic we all have to do our part. Caring for others is another form of cure. Again, thank you VP Leni Robredo and family for caring,” he added.

The vice president confirmed in a post on her Facebook page that Tricia — who passed the licensure exam for doctors last year — was indeed part of OVP team that was in Malabon to continue the Swab Cab program.

“Tricia was one of the volunteer swabbers of our Swab Cab today and a number of people she was with sent me pics and tagged me on Facebook,” the vice president said.

“Thank you very much to everyone!! Thank you most especially to the BHERTs who did a great job in the immediate contact tracing. The good thing about swab antigen tests is results are out in 15 minutes. Whenever there is one who tests positive, an ambulance on standby brings him/her directly to a pre designated isolation center. Then, contact tracing immediately ensues,” she explained.

Earlier, the OVP sent out photos showing the Swab Cab continuing its operations in Malabon, especially in densely-populated communities that may hold conditions for community transmissions.

Robredo said that, out of the 711 tests done on Tuesday, 46 turned out positive. Possible patients who showed symptoms but tested negative would be asked to take a confirmatory RT-PCR test on Wednesday.

The Philippines is currently grappling with a surge in COVID-19 cases, which health experts blaming it on new variants of the coronavirus. On Tuesday, the country tallied a record-high 382 newly-reported deaths, bringing the nationwide death toll to 13,817.

The Department of Health said that the high single-day increase in deaths was due to errors in the COVID-19 database, leading to low death rates in the previous weeks.

As of Tuesday, active cases in the country were at 152,562, while the total confirmed case count was at 812,760.

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