Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 22) — Marikina City’s chief executive on Monday urged the national government to step up its efforts in finding ways to supplement the COVID-19 response of local government units, such as providing additional healthcare capacity and ramped up testing and contact tracing amid the ongoing surge of COVID-19 cases.
Mayor Marcelino Teodoro said hospitals in the city are getting filled to the brim due to the spike in COVID-19 patients being admitted, adding they need to look for medical facilities outside the city that can still take in patients. Some government hospitals in Quezon City have also reached full capacity following the three straight days of record-high numbers of new coronavirus infections over the weekend.
Teodoro called on national government officials to ramp up the One Hospital Command Center, a healthcare network deployed for faster and more efficient COVID-19 case referral.
“This is now the challenge really for the national government or for the Department of Health, to make the One Hospital Command more functional at this point in time,” he told CNN Philippines. “There is a need to further increase the capacity of the national healthcare system. Meaning we need to increase the manpower, equipment, bed capacity to deal with the current outbreak.”
OCTA Research Group projected on Saturday that intensive care units of hospitals in Metro Manila may reach 100% capacity in the first week of April. The government has urged private and public hospitals to increase their dedicated beds for COVID-19 patients in response to the surge of infections in the country.
The Marikina mayor also said the government should also come up with more efficient ways to manage the pandemic. Teodoro called on the private sector to lend a hand in overcoming the case surge.
“What we’re explaining to the national government from the side of the LGU, we should do it more systematically and there should be complementation of resources from the national and local,” he said.
Metro Manila and nearby provinces Rizal, Bulacan, Cavite, and Laguna are under a “general community quarantine bubble” until April 4. This new directive aims to cut the transmission of COVID-19 in areas outside of the bubble by banning leisure travel, mass gatherings, and indoor dining in restaurants, in these areas for two weeks.
Daily COVID-19 infections in the country reached an all-time high on March 20 with nearly 8,000 new cases.
