One of the COVID positive ship crew members of the ill-fated MV Athens Bridge has been intubated, the Philippine Department of Health announced today.
Read: 2 crew members of MV Athens Bridge rushed to hospital for COVID
A total of 12 sailors have tested positive for COVID, with three of them relying on oxygen support. Two of the crew members have already fully recuperated. All of the 12 were infected with the Indian variant of the coronavirus.
“We’re looking at the course of their illness compared to other variants, and they’re longer and worse,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in an online briefing today.
“One of them is intubated but the hospital said that he is doing fine and is improving. Three of them are under oxygen support and they are also doing well,” Vergeire said.
The ship departed from India on April 22 and arrived on May 1 in Vietnam, where it was discovered that a dozen of its members had been infected with COVID. The ship was initially barred from coming to the Philippines, but the Duterte government relented because all sailors of the Panamanian ship were Filipinos.
All travelers from India have been forbidden from entering the Philippines to prevent the spread of the B.1.617 variant, which has killed thousands of people in the subcontinent.
