(Eagle News) — Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III did not say that an Overseas Filipino Worker in Dubai died of the novel coronavirus, the Department of Labor and Employment said on Friday, Feb. 7.
“The Labor Secretary on Thursday announced that the OFW had died of ‘coronavirus’ based on earlier information provided (to) his office…The secretary, however, did not say it was the novel coronavirus,” DOLE said in a statement, after the Dubai government denied Bello’s statement.
DOLE said a belated report from the Philippine Labor Office in Dubai showed that results of confirmatory tests on the Filipina’s specimen yielded negative of the novel coronavirus.
The tests were conducted by the Pathology and Genetics Department of the Dubai Health Authority.
The statement said Bello, nonetheless, “wishes to apologize to the government of Dubai for the confusion and whatever anxiety that the announcement may have caused.”
According to Gulf News, the Dubai Government media office denied the “validity of statements by the Philippine Minister of Labour regarding the death of a Filipino woman in Dubai due to novel coronavirus.”
Gulf News said according to the World Health Organization, the cause of death is pneumonia, based on information from “contacts with the concerned party who confirmed that the case is not a 2019-nCoV nor a MERS-CoV. “
