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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Tale of two new borns: One survives, the other perishes

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Some good and bad news amid the anxious days of the sweeping pandemic coronavirus–with a 16-day-old baby among the country’s youngest survivor among 25 infants infected with COVID-19.

Tale of two new borns: One survives, the other perishes
YOUNGEST SURVIVOR. A 16-day-old baby survives the virus, nursed back into health by frontline medics at the National Children’s Hospital, who tirelessly took care of the new born for 11 days. DOH Facebook page

The downside is that a nine-day-old is the youngest fatality from the new coronavirus as of Thursday, said Department of Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire.

Vergeire said the number of COVID-19 survivors leaped to 1,043 with 20 new recoveries, adding the confirmed cases reached 8,488 after 276 tested positive from the new coronavirus.

The death toll was logged at 568 with 10 new deaths.

The 16-day-old baby, admitted at the National Children’s Hospital in Quezon City, recovered from the COVID-19 after 11 days.

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DOH lauded the healthcare team who nursed the infant who they called “Baby Survivor” back to health.

“The DOH applauds our valiant healthcare team for this feat,” the DOH said on its Facebook page.

“We at the DOH commit to provide the needed health commodities and personal protective equipment as our health facilities accept patients of various ages,” the DOH added.

READ: COVID-19 Tracker: PHILIPPINES as of April 30, 2020

In an interview over ABS-CBN, heard nationwide, the father of Baby Kobe from Muntinlupa said they had no idea how the child was infected.

Dr. Sherwin William Leonardo, a neonatologist who co-managed Baby Kobe while he was confined at the NCH, said the baby was brought there when he was just five days old.

They noticed that his stomach was enlarged and his parents reported that he had vomited and had not defecated.

While Baby Kobe was born at home, Leonardo said there seemed to be no complications from the birth.

“He was not premature. His activities and crying were normal after the birth, according to the parents,” Leonardo said.

During a virtual briefing with media, Vergeire said six of the 25 infants who contracted the coronavirus died while the rest got well.

According to Vergeire, there is also no evidence yet of vertical transmission or for the infection to be passed from the mother to the baby immediately after birth.

READ: Lawmakers look for recovery path

She cited the need for studies to come out with evidence before saying that the transmission of the coronavirus to babies born at Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital tested positive for the disease.

She said the babies most likely got infected after they were born.

She noted that this is also unlikely for Baby Kobe since Leonardo said the mother already tested negative of COVID-19.

Leonardo said the NCH had four confirmed cases of COVID-19. One of them is Baby Kobe and the other was a 14- or 15-day old male infant from Caloocan who died on April 2.

Meanwhile, Binakayan Hospital in Cavite and Medical Center and Perpetual Help Medical Center in Las Pinas City have paid tribute to Dr. David Jonathan Pagaduan, an anesthesiologist, who recently passed away.

Both hospitals did not mention the cause of death. Various personal social media posts however claimed Pagaduan was a COVID-19 frontliner.

“You have left a big vacuum in all of us. You will be sorely missed,” the Binakayan Hospital and Medical Center said in a Facebook post.

Perpetual Hospital meanwhile said Pagaduan was a fallen hero. “Salute to our fallen hero, Dr. David Jonathan Pagaduan. From your Perpetual Help Medical Center – Las Piñas Family, thank you very much for your commitment and service to our community,” it said in a video posted on its Facebook page.

READ: Diokno sees ‘U-shaped’ recovery

Meanwhile, Vergeire admitted it would be “quite risky” to say the Philippines had reached the peak of its COVID-19 cases..

Vergeire said: “When we look at the new cases daily, we can see that the numbers are within the same range. It is averaging on the 100 to 200s.”

“But it’s hard and it’s quite risky for us to declare now that we really are plateauing and we really are reaching that peak. We have not yet reached that. Even I can’t say that.”

She said it was too early to say, especially now that the country had the ability to test more people in different parts of the country.

Vergeire said they would have to analyze how the cases would increase as expanded testing continues. She said all projections will change because of the new data coming in in the next several days.

At the same time, the Quezon City local government said it had 1,269 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of April 29, 7 p.m.

“Total number of confirmed cases with complete addresses in Quezon City is now at 1,098,” it said.

In related developments, the Department of Health said there was no evidence supporting the claim that the poor had developed some kind of resilience or immunity against COVID-19.

Vergeire said in a virtual conference the World Health Organization already said there could be no “immunity passports” since much was yet to be known about the novel coronavirus.

On Wednesday, Presidential adviser on entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion, citing priests and bishops, said the incidence of COVID-19 in poor communities was minimal and that this sector was “resilient” to the virus.

“When we talked to the proponents of Caritas project, which involved about 30 business organizations, the same thing was relayed to them that many of the poor are somehow resilient to the virus,” Concepcion said.

Meanwhile, due to the stigma that goes with being psychiatric patients, National Center for Mental Health Director Roland Cortez said they decided to convert a hospital pavilion to “an isolation facility” to accommodate their COVID-19 patients with mild and severe symptoms.

Speaking in a virtual presser, Cortez said the hospital management turned NCMH’s Pavilion 7 into a quarantine facility where 17 psychiatric patients were placed for close monitoring of their conditions.

One of them has since recovered from the dreaded virus.

“This [Pavilion 7], a hundred-bed general hospital, was converted to isolation room, specific for our psychiatric cases… there’s problems of referring them to various hospitals due to the stigma…” said Cortez.

He said the NCMH still had many suspects or those patients being observed with mild and severe signs, but were yet to be swabbed.

He said 39 in-patients were considered suspects for COVID-19.

At present, he said the mental hospital has 3,200 in-patients.

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