160 PSG members test positive for COVID-19 via rapid test; Duterte shielded, PSG assures

One hundred sixty members of the Presidential Security Group tested positive for COVID-19 via a rapid test, PSG Commander Colonel Jesus Durante III said.

However, one PSG member tested positive for COVID-19 via the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, Durante said, according to tweets by GMA News reporter Joseph Morong.

160 members of the Presidential Security Group (PSG) tested positive for COVID-19 via rapid test since March; one tested positive via PCR test, says PSG Commander Col. Jesus Durante @gmanews

— Joseph Morong ???????? (@Joseph_Morong) May 19, 2020

Durante gave the assurance that President Rodrigo Duterte remains shielded from COVID-19. 

PSG Commander Col. Jesus Durante assures Pres. Duterte remains shielded from COVID-19 @gmanews

— Joseph Morong ???????? (@Joseph_Morong) May 19, 2020

He said Duterte had no exposure to the PSG member who tested positive for the virus. 

“No exposure with PRRD [President Duterte]. Does not belong with close-in security detail. So far 90 have been tested by PCR,” Durante said. 

“A total of 160 [PSG members] were quarantined but were mostly released after 14 days of no symptoms and tested negative with RDT [rapid diagnostic test] and PCR tests," he added.

Durante said the PSG member who tested positive had already recovered from the disease.

“All PSG personnel are being tested by RDT every 15 days. If found positive by RDT they are confined and isolated for 15 days then subjected to PCR test. So far, only one personnel has been found positive by PCR but is now fully recovered,” he said.

The PSG has been conducting COVID-19 testing since March on all  personnel and their dependents "to ensure that PSG troopers do not become a threat to the President themselves and guarantee that his safety is not compromised in any way," Durante said.

"[The] PSG Compound and Malacañang Complex remain to be safe and secured for the President and the first family," he added.

The Palace said Duterte was in Davao City to be with his family during the weekend after Metro Manila and six provinces were shifted to modified enhanced community quarantine from the more strict enhanced community quarantine.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque on Tuesday said Duterte arrived Monday night in Malacañang.

Duterte is set to have a meeting with the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases later on Tuesday.

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country reached 12,718 as of Monday, the Department of Health said. 

Of this number, 2,729 recovered while 831 died. —KG/AOL, GMA News