At least 78 percent of isolation facilities in the National Capital Region are already occupied, Health Undersecretary Leopoldo Vega said Tuesday.
Vega made the announcement a day after the government implemented an NCR Plus bubble policy where residents of NCR and adjacent provinces Bulacan, Cavite, Rizal and Laguna are prevented from going outside the NCR plus border unless it is an essential trip—including going to the work place—from March 22 to April 4 to address the surge in COVID-19 cases.
Isolation facilities include quarantine hotels and temporary treatment and monitoring facilities.
“We need to increase our isolation facilities because our TTMFs and isolation hotels are already occupied at 78 percent. If we have 8,000 new COVID-19 cases and 4,000 are in NCR since 63 percent of cases are in NCR, with 97 percent of them mild and asymptomatic, we need an extra number of isolation facilities,” Vega said during the Laging Handa briefing.
“We should prioritize this because hospitals should be the last line of defense for moderate and severe cases),” Vega added.
The Philippines posted a record-setting 8,109 new COVID-19 cases in a day last March 22, the first day of the implementation of the NCR Plus bubble strategy.
Earlier in the day, OCTA Research’s Professor Guido David said the stricter restrictions imposed over Metro Manila and its neighboring areas in the “bubble” are unlikely to bring down the reproduction number of the coronavirus to 1 within two weeks.
“Right now, the reproduction number in NCR is about 2.1 and if we want to reduce the number of cases, that means we have to reduce the reproduction number from 2.1 all the way down to 1. This cannot happen in two weeks, unfortunately,” David told CNN Philippines.
The reproduction number refers to the number of people that one COVID-19 case can infect.
“If we could get the reproduction number to about 1.5, that’s actually very optimistic. It’s unlikely to get it below that within two weeks.
I’m not saying it’s impossible but it seems unlikely,” David said.
The One Hospital Command Center that oversees the facility referral for COVID-19 patients is "overwhelmed" with calls for assistance, its head said on Tuesday, as the Philippines battled an uptick in coronavirus infections.
An average of 300 calls a day are being received by the command center recently, up from only around 66 about 3 weeks ago, said treatment "czar" Dr. Leopoldo Vega.
This has led to "many" overflow and pending calls, which authorities aim to fix by hiring more IT and paramedical personnel to man phone lines, said Vega.
According to the latest report of the COVID-19 National Task Force, while there are only 2,043 usable beds in TTMFs in Metro Manila, there are already 3,708 who were admitted, as of Sunday, March 21. All other regions still have available beds, the report showed.
The Mega LIGTAS facilities in Metro Manila, which only have 156 usable
beds, were also accommodating 807 individuals as of Sunday. The facilities in Region III, which have 253 usable beds, have admitted 592 individuals, the same report showed.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque said in a meeting Monday with President Rodrigo Duterte that the spike in new infections is caused possibly by the presence of COVID-19 variants in the country, the increased mobility of people as a result of the gradual reopening of the economy, and the public's "token compliance" with minimum health standards.
Duque said: “I am appealing to our fellow countrymen that if you can, while we don't have enough vaccines yet, let's not set aside the wearing of face mask and face shield and physical distancing because these offer more than 95 percent protection.”
The new wave of cases in the Philippines, which has the second highest number of COVID-19 infections and deaths in Southeast Asia, is threatening hopes of a strong economic rebound after a record contraction last year and the loss of millions of jobs.
The country, which launched its vaccination drive later than neighbors at the start of this month, has received delivery of 1.125 million donated doses of the Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccines.
New variants of the COVID-19 virus now appear to be dominant among coronavirus patients in the Philippine General Hospital.
According to a report on GMA News, 23 out of the 29 COVID-19 samples sent for genome sequencing came back positive for the transmissible UK and South Africa variants.
The Department of Health earlier said that the two coronavirus variants of concern were now present in all the cities of Metro Manila.
“We saw that these variants are now in all cities here in Metro Manila. That is factual,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a briefing.
“In all of the cities, we have either the UK variant or the South Africa variant. Also in other cities, they have both UK variant and South Africa variant,” she said.
As the Philippines continues to grapple with a fresh surge of coronavirus infections, 24 hospitals in Metro Manila have already reached full capacity of their intensive care unit (ICU) beds for
COVID-19 cases, Department of Health data showed.
According to DOH data analyzed by the GMA News Research team, the following hospitals no longer have available ICU beds for COVID-19 patients as of March 20:
· Pasig City General Hospital
· Metropolitan Medical Center
· Medical Center Manila, Inc.
· Las Piñas Doctors Hospital, Inc.
· Las Piñas General Hospital & Satellite Trauma Center
· St. Luke's Medical Center
· Allied Care Experts (Ace) Medical Center-Quezon City, Inc.
· Makati Medical Center
· F.Y. Manalo Medical Foundation, Inc.
· Chinese General Hospital & Medical Center
· Providence Hospital, Inc.
· National Children's Hospital
· National Kidney And Transplant Institute
· Sta. Ana Hospital
· Mandaluyong City Medical Center
· MCU-FDT Medical Foundation Hospital
· Metro North Medical Center And Hospital, Inc.
· Commonwealth Hospital And Medical Center
· Allied Care Experts (Ace) Medical Center Valenzuela, Inc.
· Asian Hospital Inc.
· Medical Center Muntinlupa, Inc.
· San Lazaro Hospital
· Research Institute For Tropical Medicine
· Unihealth Parañaque Hospital And Medical Center, Inc.
Mechanical ventilators
Meanwhile, 100 percent of mechanical ventilators for COVID-19 patients
are already in use in the following Metro Manila hospitals:
· Metropolitan Medical Center
· Rosario Maclang Bautista General Hospital
· Ospital Ng Muntinlupa
· World Citi Medical Center, Inc.
· Las Piñas Doctors Hospital, Inc.
· Quirino Memorial Medical Center
· Allied Care Experts (Ace) Medical Center-Quezon City, Inc.
· Las Piñas General Hospital & Satellite Trauma Center
· Medical Center Manila, Inc.
· St. Luke's Medical Center
· Cardinal Santos Medical Center
· Amang Rodriguez Memorial Medical Center
· Pasig Doctors Medical Center Inc.
· Dr. Jesus C. Delgado Memorial Hospital
· Veterans Memorial Medical Center
· Quezon City General Hospital
Two other hospitals—the Makati Medical Center and the University of the East Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Medical Center—logged 93.33 percent and 88.89 percent usage of their mechanical ventilators, respectively.
Meanwhile, the Medical City has around 100 COVID-19 patients, with 84 suffering from a moderate case of the disease and 16 in the intensive care unit, said Dr. Rafael Claudio. Some 20 patients were waiting in the emergency room as of Monday, he said.
After the country recorded the highest number of fresh COVID-19 cases, the Department of Health advised on Monday that mild, asymptomatic COVID-19 patients, as well as close contacts of infected patients, must be placed in temporary isolation facilities.
"For example our close contacts, asymptomatics and mild cases should be in temporary treatment and monitoring facilities called TTMFs," said Health Secretary Francisco Duque III in a televised meeting with President Rodrigo Duterte and Cabinet officials.
Duque explained that confining asymptomatic and mild patients in temporary facilities would help reduce the pressure on COVID-19 treatment in hospitals.
"All asymptomatic and mild patients must be placed in temporary facilities so that it won't burden our hospitals. If you are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, go to TTMF and avoid going to hospitals,” he said.
However, Duque also said local government units might choose to implement home quarantine if all family members are infected with the respiratory disease.
Metro Manila’s health care utilization rate has increased by 21 percentage points amid the surge of COVID-19 cases in the National Capital Region, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said.
In a briefing with President Rodrigo Duterte, Duque said despite this, the overall healthcare utilization rate in Metro Manila remains in a “safe zone.”
He said the rise in healthcare utilization rate was also seen in Regions 4A, 2, Cordillera Administrative Region, 3, 4B, and 6.
With this, Duque urged the public to continue observing minimum health standards to curb the spread of the virus.
He also urged local government units and hospitals to refer patients in the right facilities depending on their symptoms.