Manila hospitals offer home care to virus patients

MANILA: Mainly due to lack of beds and wards, many hospitals in Metro Manila have started offering home care services particularly for mild coronavirus patients, according to a health expert.

Dr Anna Ong Lim, a member of the health department’s technical working group, said one hospital has been offering a 10-day home care package amounting to $340 including laboratory fees, vitamins and 10 telemedicine sessions with a doctor and a nurse.

“Many hospitals are now offering home care for COVID-19 cases and we have seen many of them share in various social media plaforms because there is really a big need to answer this question: How do I make sure that my family member is care for property,?” Lim told a virtual media forum.

“So this is one portal that we can use so that, at the outset,” Lim added, “we have a health care professional guiding us on the steps to be able to provide home care for our family member.”

But Lim also admited that the concept of home care is easier said than done especially with the lack of doctors, nurses and other health professionals arising from the spike in COVID-19 infections in Metro Manila and neighbouring areas that resulted in the severe lack of hospital beds and wards for the coronavirus.

Nevertheless, she insisted the concept could help ease the increasing problem of families of COVID-19 patients seeing their mothers, fathers and other relatives die outside emergency rooms while awaiting for a vacant bed where they can be confined.

For instance, only one member of a family should be assigned as a caretaker to establish an emergency channel of communication with the doctor or nurse assigned, Lim said as she pointed out: “Only one member of the family should be assigned as caretaker who must be healthy, reliable and alert to assess the patient’s condition.”

On Sunday, Harry Roque, the presidential spokesman, announced that President Duterte had approved a recommendation of the InterAgency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases to downgrade by one level the strictest enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) imposed on Metro Manila and four adjacent provinces from March 29 to April 11.

Roque said the downgrading to modified ECQ (MECQ) with effect from April 12 to 30, would also cover the provinces of Cavite, Laguna and Rizal in Southern Luzon as well as Bulacan in Central Luzon where the surge of virus cases threatened to overwhelm their healthcare systems.