By Froilan Gallardo
Special Correspondent

AN entire family of eight including the grandparents were isolated on Thursday after they were infected with the virulent Delta variant of the coronavirus.

The family that included the 62-year-old grandfather and his 57-year-old wife were immediately placed under isolation in an undisclosed temporary treatment and monitoring facility (TTMF) in Cagayan de Oro.

Mayor Oscar Moreno immediately ordered health officials to check if the highly infectious Delta variant had spread to the neighbors of the family who reside in Barangay Balulang here.

Moreno said if they found that the deadly variant has spread, he would order a granular lockdown in Barangay Balulang to stop it.

“This is a sufficient warning that a local transmission is spreading,” Moreno said.

Aside from the family in Balulang, the city health office also found another Delta variant case residing in barangay Upper Canitoan.

Dr. Ted Yu of the Cagayan de Oro health office said this brought the number of Delta patients in the city to 13 including the five cases discovered two weeks ago.

The discovery of new Delta cases came as President Rodrigo Duterte extended the strictest enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) classification of Cagayan de Oro Wednesday until August 7 as Covid-19 cases continue to rise in the past weeks.

Gingoog City which has one case of Delta variant was also placed under the strictest quarantine protocol until August 7.

The province of Misamis Oriental was placed under the modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) with heightened restrictions from August 1 to August 15.

Yu said like the first Delta cases, the family had already been sent home last July 18 after their swab tests for Covid -19 turned negative.

He said the Philippine Genome Center only informed them that the family was infected by the Delta variant last July 28.

“We have to ask them to return to the isolation facility,” Yu told reporters during the daily press briefings here.

He said the entire family, which included the grandparents, an 11-month old baby, and a six-year-old girl, were brought to the isolation facility this morning.