Passengers with protective masks wait at the departure area at Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila on Wednesday.

Manolo B. Jara, Correspondent

A health official on Wednesday revealed that the third confirmed novel coronavirus (nCOV) victim in the Philippines was a 60-year-old Chinese woman who was, however, allowed to return to China after she proved negative in the initial tests for the dreaded ailment.

Health Undersecretary Eric Domingo told a media conference the victim flew in to Cebu City in the Visayas in on Jan.20 from Wuhan City, the epicenter of the nCOV in Hubei province in China, via Hong Kong.

From Cebu City, Domingo said the woman proceeded immediately to the island province of Bohol, a popular tourist resort also in the Visayas, where she checked into a hospital two days later on Jan.22 after complaining of fever, colds and “runny nose,” based on her travel records.

On Jan.24, samples taken from the woman were taken for testing to an Australian laboratory as well as the health department’s Regional Institute for Regional Medicine (RITM) based in Metro Manila, according to Domingo.

Both tests proved negative, Domingo added, resulting in the release of the woman from confinement at the Bohol hospital and which allowed her and her companion to fly back to Shenzhen, China, on Jan.31.

But shortly after her departure, Domingo revealed the RITM released its latest findings that the woman was found positive for the disease that has spread to more than 20 countries throughout the world, including the Philippines with three confirmed infections - all Chinese nationals - one of whom had died Domingo said the clinical explanation was that the different test results arose when the woman was reaching the end of her ailment when the samples were taken.

This developed as Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra ordered the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to go afger people who spread online “lies and misinformation” over nCOV that “cause undue panic and alarm” among the people.

“The nCOV threat is a very serious public concern and no distraction of government efforts to overcome it will not be tolerated. Such moves undermine government efforts for a united and coordinated appraisal to a health threat that affects us all,” Guevarra pointed out.

In his order, he told the NBI to conduct a case bulldup against those behind the nCOV online lies and misinformation so that proper criminal charges could be filed against them like violation of the Cybercrime Prevention Law.