Philippines orders hospitals to raise bed capacity

MANILA: The government on Monday started stocking up on its oxygen supply and ordered hospitals to expand their bed capacity in preparation for a new possible surge of coronavirus infections, this time from the deadly Delta variant.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire reiterated warnings that a spike in COVID-19 infections was possible following the confirmation of 11 local cases of the Delta strain in Metro Manila, Northern Mindanao, Western Visayas and Central Luzon.

“We are preparing for this Delta variant. As we said, it’s just a mater of time before it enters,” Vergeire told an online briefing in a mix of Filipino and English. “Our hospitals are now more guided that they should be expanding their (COVID-19) intensive care units and beds already.”

She added local government units have been urged to intensify their PDITR (PreventDetect-isolate-treat-reintegrate) response to help prevent community transmission of the dreaded and highly-transmissible Delta strain especially at the “barangay” (village) level.

“We must do active case finding,” Vergeire explained, “in order to shorten the duration from the time a person is detected as a positive case until he/she is located and quarantined.”

Another official disclosed that the government was also stocking up on its oxygen supply to avert a similar tragedy that befell India and Indonesia which ran out of such vital medical product when the Delta strain continued to wreak havoc in the two countries.

At the same time, General Guillermo Eleazar, the chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP), said he ordered lawmen to co-ordinate closely with other concerned government agencies to seal the “porous” borders of Mindanao against the entry of the variant.

Eleazar said he issued the order on Sunday when he visited the island provinces of Sulu, Basilan and Tawi-tawi to check security preparations not only against possible atacks by the Daesh-inspired Abu Sayyaf terrorists but also measures to prevent the entry of the Delta strain from Indonesia, “our neighbour.”

However, Dr Jose Rene de Grano, the head of the Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines (PHAP), warned that some of their members were “understaffed” in the face of a possible spike in COVID-19 infections from the Delta strain.

“We have enough oxygen support, ventilators but if there will be a surge, we cannot easily expand our COVID-19 intensive care units because it comes with huge expenses,” Grano admited.