Filipina quarantined in Hong Kong due to 2019-nCoV to be released

HONG KONG - A Filipina migrant worker in Hong Kong who was allegedly exposed to an elderly couple infected with new coronavirus (2019-nCoV) will be released Friday midnight, the Philippine consulate confirmed Thursday.

The Filipina was placed under strict quarantine last Jan. 23 at the Maclehose Holiday Camp in Sai Kung town.

In a text message to ABS-CBN News, Consul General Raly Tejada said the Department of Health (DOH) will be taking care of the Filipina's further health necessities.

The Filipina has been consistently asymptomatic and healthy from the time she was put under quarantine, authorities said.

Health officials said she came into contact with the elderly couple, the parents of her employer, after they came from the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the 2019-nCoV outbreak.

The couple reportedly arrived in Hong Kong via high-speed rail on January 22, before they both developed fever over the next two days and were hospitalized. The couple had been staying with their daughter, who lived at the Lake Silver Estate in Ma On Shan.

Tejada said the Filipina will still be working for her employers.

"Walang sakit yan. Cleared na siya - she will be taken to her residence (employers), which has been sanitized by the Health Department," he said.

On Feb. 5, the consulate confirmed that a second Filipino domestic worker was put under quarantine. The Filipina, under observation, is also asymptomatic and healthy.

• 2nd Filipino domestic worker quarantined in Hong Kong

She was an employee of Hong Kong's 13th confirmed case of 2019-nCoV. He later died of sudden heart failure on Feb. 4 and is the city's first new coronavirus-related casualty.

Earlier, the Hong Kong Labor Department released an advisory urging domestic workers to stay at home on their rest days as a precautionary measure to ''reduce the risk of spread of the novel coronavirus in the community''.

This did not sit well, however, with some members of the community, who said it was unfair, unjust and discriminatory to be singling out the city's almost 400,000 foreign domestic workers, mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia.

The International Migrants' Alliance Hong Kong and Macau Chapter on Feb. 5, called on the government to "withdraw the discriminatory advisory", and tell employers to give their workers free protective materials such as face masks, vitamin C, alcohol-based sanitizing gel or spray, and also sufficient rest.