Healthcare utilization in three regions remains at critical risk amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the One Hospital Command Center said on Friday.
During the Laging Handa briefing, Dr. Marylaine Padlan of the One Hospital Command Center identified the regions as Cordillera Administrative Region, Region 2 and Caraga.
Under high-risk level are Region 4B or Mimaropa, Region 5 and Region 9, she said.
Reproduction number
The National Capital Region’s COVID-19 reproduction number continues to go down, dropping to 0.84 on Friday from 0.98 a week ago, the OCTA Research Group said.
Reproduction number refers to the number of people that one COVID-19 case can infect.
A reproduction number that is below 1 indicates that the transmission of the virus is slowing down.
OCTA fellow Dr. Guido David, in a tweet, said NCR – which will remain under Alert Level 4 from October 1 to 15 – had an average of 3,711 new cases from September 24 to 30, or 17 percent lower than the previous week.
COVID updates
The country logged on Friday 15,566 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the total to 2,565,487, with five laboratories not able to submit their data on time, the Department of Health reported.
The DOH also reported 199 new fatalities, bringing the death toll to 38,493, which is 1.5 percent of the total.
There were 23,483 new recoveries, bringing the total active cases to 130,268.
Budget cuts
Four specialty hospitals in Quezon City that are doubling as COVID-19 treatment facilities will suffer budget cuts amounting to P961 million next year, a House leader said Friday.
“It’s ironic that we are in the middle of a pandemic and we are not giving our hospitals enough financial support. We are even cutting their budgets,” Rep. Precious Hipolito Castelo of the city’s second district said.
Based on budget documents submitted to Congress, Castelo said the Lung Center of the Philippines, a COVID-19 referral hospital, would have P405 million in 2022, P100 million lower than its P505-million budget this year.
The National Kidney and Transplant Institute, which also treats patients suffering from the highly infectious novel coronavirus and its various variants, will have P9 million less than its present funding of P1,271,442,000, she added.
Financial subsidy for the Philippine Heart Center, on the other hand, would go down by P29 million to P1,766,827,000.