The Department of Health on Tuesday supported the call of medical professionals and health worker groups for a better COVID-19 response by households, communities, and local and national governments, even as it hired 10,000 health professionals for the second half of the year.
This developed as the utilization rate of temporary treatment and monitoring facilities (TTMFs) in the country stood at 33% percent, but the figure in Metro Manila was substantially higher, the DOH reported.
Meanwhile, the government has offered home care packages to patients suffering mild symptoms of COVID-19 due to a shortage in hospital beds amid a surge in infections. The One Hospital Command Center said they were receiving between 480 to 560 calls for help daily.
The Philippines averaged 131 COVID-19 deaths per day last August when the country experienced an uptick in cases due to the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant, the department said.
The country, meanwhile, is set to receive three million doses of Sinovac and around 753,480 doses of Pfizer vaccines against the coronavirus, bringing to 55 million the total number of doses the country has received since February.
Some 2,000 workers from the construction and manufacturing sectors are also set to be inoculated against COVID-19, the Department of Labor and Employment said.
In the Senate, Sen. Ralph Recto said Malacañang should convene a task force, to include diplomats and taipans, which will solve the shortage of tocilizumab and other anti-pneumonia drugs made scarce by the surge in the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
To unburden the healthcare system, Senator Christopher “Bong” Go also urged the national government to take necessary steps to expand the national vaccination program to the general public as more supplies come in.
Meanwhile, the DOH Calabarzon recently launched “Project DELTA” (Detect Early Local Transmission through Antigen Testing) and completed mass testing in the province of Quezon, where Delta variant cases were recorded. Willie Casas, Joel Zurbano, Macon Ramos-Araneta
