PHAPi President Jose de Grano told CNN Philippines’ New Day on Tuesday that should the deployment of public healthcare personnel to private hospitals push through, it must be “voluntary.”
As of March 21, at least 37 of the 159 hospitals in the National Capital Region have reached the critical level in terms of bed occupancy for COVID-19 patients, according to data from the Department of Health. This is almost double the number last week, which was 20, de Grano noted.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 22) — As the government directs public and private hospitals to increase their COVID-19 bed capacity, the Department of Health on Monday said it is working to augment the health workers in medical facilities in need of more help as coronavirus cases continue to soar.
The Inter-Agency Task Force has urged that 30% and 50% of beds in private and public hospitals, respectively, must be allocated for COVID-19 patients.
However, the Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines (PHAPi) said private health facilities do not have enough health workers even if they increase the number of patients they can accommodate, adding some medical frontliners are incapacitated because they have also caught COVID-19.
A total of 1,154 healthcare workers contracted COVID-19 from Feb. 1 to March 21, with at least 367 still recovering.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said they are looking for ways to address the manpower issue. They are eyeing to use the same tactics carried out during the case spike back in July-August 2020, such as redirecting medical frontliners from areas with low COVID-19 cases, she said.
“Alam natin na kapag nagdagdag ka ng kama, kailangan may kaakibat na tao na magbabantay,” she said in a media briefing. “Kaya nga, pinag-uusapan na ang augmentation kung paano magagawan ng paraan ulit.”
[Translation: We know that once you increase the number of beds, it has a corresponding staff. That is why we are discussing how to do the augmentation, how we can fix this again.]
The official, however, reminded that the private and public hospitals are bound by law to respond to the changing needs due to the pandemic.
The OCTA Research group has projected that intensive care units of hospitals in Metro Manila may reach 100% capacity in the first week of April.
CNN Philippines correspondent Carolyn Bonquin contributed to this report.
