17 Members of the Yacab Family Tested Positive for COVID-19

Edwin Yacab

In our interview with Edwin Yacab he revealed that his brother Elias worked with Prosser Fertilizer and Agrotec Company Limited in Santa Elena. While he notes that he had contact with a wide number of people but up to now they don’t know how or where his brother contracted the virus. What they do know is that the entire family – seventeen persons in total, including their children, have all tested positive for COVID-19. 

On the Phone: Edwin Yacab, Brother of Deceased

“He used to work at Prosser Fertilizer – the plant at mile eight. He was later transferred to Santa Elena store. He was managing the store for almost four years. He was very caring and united with the family. If anybody ever needed anything he didn’t thing twice to help. He was very hard working and we were very proud of him.”

Andrea Polanco

“You guys have an idea where or how he contracted that virus?”

On the Phone: Edwin Yacab

“Well, that is the thing, people ask us and even us we ask the same question as to where he might get infected and we don’t have an answer because he used to deal with a lot of people. It is an agro-vet store he used to manage and a lot of people used to go there to buy chemicals and poison and fertilizers. We really can’t tell if he was the one infected first from the family or anyone else because after everything – the family, along with the children, there are seventeen of us and all seventeen of us came out positive from COVID, that is including children.  Like six of us were really affected to the point where we couldn’t breathe properly. If we walked we get tired. We had cough and pain in our lungs and fever. But we are going through it and thank God we are making it. We see very little progress as the days pass by but we are hopeful that we are going to get better soon.  I know a lot of people criticize the doctors and hospitals and yes many of them neglect the services yes but the doctors that attended to him and were with him all the time usually gave us an update daily. And we see even though we couldn’t see the patient and the doctor but according to what he shared with us we can say that they yeah they did their best right up to the last day. And we really appreciate their services and everything they did for my brother.”

We note that Prosser Fertilizer issued a notice on September third to say that they had closed their Santa Elena Branch to be disinfected and sanitized because one of their employees had tested positive and others were to be swabbed.  A subsequent notice said that the store was closed for a second time to be disinfected because for employees had tested positive and on Tuesday night the store manager Elias Yacab died as a result of the virus.