THE 35-year-old woman from Valladolid, Negros Occidental, who was identified as the first coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Lambda variant case in the Philippines, and her newborn baby have yielded negative results in their latest swab tests.

Mayor Enrique Miravalles told reporters on Tuesday the development, a day after the woman and the infant underwent another round of reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests.

The status of the patient is being “closely monitored,” he said.

However, Miravalles seemed incredulous on how the resident of the town in southern Negros contracted the Lambda variant when she has not even left the province in the past year.

“It’s hard to believe that she had the Lambda variant since she has no history of travel. All the members of her family have negative results. So where did she get that (variant of the) virus? They say the Lambda is from Peru,” he said.

On Monday afternoon, the Department of Health (DOH)-Region 6 (Western Visayas) reported that the country’s first Lambda variant case was found in the region.

The then-pregnant Negrense patient was subjected to routine swabbing on July 2, and when she tested positive for Covid-19, but asymptomatic, she was isolated in a quarantine facility.

She was again tested on July 16, and after she yielded a negative result, was tagged as recovered.

However, she again tested positive during an admission swab test at the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital (CLMMRH).

Her baby and all her other close contacts were also swabbed, but they all yielded negative results.

Both mother and newborn were then discharged and transferred to a temporary treatment monitoring facility and were released on August 6.

Four days before her discharge or on Aug. 2, the patient’s specimen was submitted to the University of the Philippines-Philippine Genome Center (UP-PGC) for whole-genome sequencing.

On Aug. 15, the DOH-6 received an endorsement from the Epidemiology Bureau, indicating that the Negrense patient tested positive for the Lambda variant. Philippine News Agency