The City of San Carlos in Negros Occidental is constructing its own coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) facility in Barangay Rizal with a budget of PHP10 million.

Mayor Renato Gustilo said in a statement on Wednesday that the city government decided to build the structure as school buildings can no longer be used as quarantine facilities once classes start.

“The Phase 1 of the temporary Covid-19 facility is almost finished,” said the mayor, who visited the construction site on Monday.

Situated in the vicinity of San Carlos City Sports Complex, the facility, which is being constructed on a 759.6 square-meter lot, has two isolation buildings and four buildings for persons under investigation (PUIs).

Each isolation building has 12 rooms, or a total of 24 rooms in both units, while the PUIs building has 14 rooms, each with toilet and bathroom.

Project engineer Jasper John Lampute said the construction is now 80 percent complete.

The Covid-19 facility is being funded through the city’s 20 percent Development Fund under the construction development of the hospital/anti-Covid-19 program.

San Carlos City has 21 confirmed cases as of Tuesday and recorded the province’s first Covid-19 death earlier this week.

The fatality was a 77-year-old man from Barangay 6, who succumbed to complications at 5:50 p.m. on Monday, the city government said in its Facebook post on Tuesday.

He was confined in the Intensive Care Unit of a tertiary government hospital in Bacolod, it added.

Investigation of the Local Contact Tracing Team headed by the City Health Office showed that the patient was brought to San Carlos City Hospital on July 20. The patient was intubated and stabilized before he was referred to a hospital in Bacolod on July 22.
On July 24, his reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT -PCR) test yielded a positive result.

The fatality worked as ferry boat captain of a shipping line operating across the ports of San Carlos City and Toledo City in Cebu. (PNA)