Doctors create safe spaces at home with ‘quarantents’ to lower the risk for family, while fighting Covid-19 at work.
Doctors create safe spaces at home while battling Covid-19 at work
AFTER taking a job in a hospital’s Covid-19 emergency room, doctor Jan Claire Dorado, 30, planned to move out of the family home to protect relatives from the risk of infection.
But Dorado’s parents insisted they keep living at home, so her father constructed a makeshift isolation area in a storage room there.
Now, when she returns from work at one of the country’s main hospitals treating Covid-19 patients, her dinner is placed outside the room’s door on a stool.
“The hardest part is being away from them. I miss them a lot,” said Dorado, who greets family members from behind a plastic window on a wall covered in foil.
Her parents are considered highrisk for Covid-19 because of pre-existing conditions, and Dorado said she once painfully refused her mother’s request for a hug.
Hundreds of Philippine medical workers have been infected by the virus and more than 30 have died. Safekeeping loved ones is also a high priority for paediatrician Mica Bastillo, even as she confronts Covid-19 head on.
The 38-year-old took on a new role at a children’s hospital in another part of Manila after it became a Covid-19 referral facility in April.
“My family thought about asking me to resign, but anywhere I go I would still have to face Covid,” she said.
With her father and sister battling medical conditions, the family built a makeshift tent next to their home for Bastillo, which they dubbed a “quarantent”.
Made out of plastic sheets to keep out the rain, it allows Bastillo to be with her family at a safe distance.
“My mother put up curtains and the tablecloth to make it look like home. My brother added the plastic sheet. It was a real family effort,” said Bastillo, who still joins her family for nightly prayers seated beside the front door wearing a mask.