Doctors see more severe virus cases
We have also observed that despite the decreasing number we are still seeing patients that are critical and emergent and who have not had access to care from the community to another facility and so they do hospital hopping
As the surge of cases continue, health professionals on Saturday disclosed that they have been seeing more severe and critical cases of COVID-19 now being admitted in hospitals.
Dr. Pauline Convocar, president of the Philippine College of Emergency Medicine, said that most of these patients are often those who are still struggling to locate hospitals with available capacities.
“We have also observed that despite the decreasing number we are still seeing patients that are critical and emergent and who have not had access to care from the community to another facility and so they do hospital hopping. And that it really leads to poor outcome to the patient,” she said in a live interview.
She said that these cases are harder to manage as the patients will be requiring more resources such as on the use of equipment and with the number of healthcare workers.
“The numbers may be decreasing but the severity of the cases that we see are still there and these are really resource intensive,” she added, noting that even the number of health workers getting infected has also weighed on the problem.
Convocar admitted that as much as the stricter lockdowns previously implemented have aided in the loosening of bed capacity, it still remains at the warning levels.
Philippine Society of Nephrology Secretary Dr. Maaliddin Biruar, who works at a government hospital, echoed her pronouncement stating that even the admission of non-COVID-19 patients has also become a struggle especially in emergency cases.
“I think also what we need to look at are diseases that are not related to the COVID-19 pandemic because most of the resources are focused on COVID-19. But what about those with chronic disease that need to be taken care of?” he said.
With this, Philippine Society of Public Health Technical Specialist Dr. Lei Alfonso reiterated that the hospital should be considered as the last line of defense.
She said that the government along with other communities should put its focus more on the preventive side of the disease to prevent the situation from worsening.
“If we are seeing a lot of cases in the hospitals, it means that we have not been doing well yet in the preventive aspect. So the prevention part, breaking the chain of transmission is something that we need to address still,” she said.
Alfonso further noted that it’s important to remind the public that because the virus may be here for a long while, coping with it through preventive measures is the main goal.
Earlier experts from the OCTA Research Team said that they have observed a decreasing trend of cases from the two-week modified enhanced community quarantine which they noted should be sustained and stabilized.
On the other hand, Convocar added that measuring how much the country has been in the pandemic should not be looked only at the data and more on other aspects also affected.
She emphasized that it likewise includes the psychological and emotional aspects which are often overlooked in measuring how much the country has fared into the pandemic especially being six months into the lockdown.
“These are just numbers, but we also have to understand that there is really a social aspect to this, there’s an emotional aspect to this and a psychological aspect and these are not measurable,” she said.
Data from the Department of Health showed that as of 17 September, the country’s critical care utilization rate is at around 46 percent which includes the mechanical, isolation, and ward beds.
The mechanical ventilators, meanwhile, still have about 74 percent vacancies that are often used among severe and critical cases.
On Friday afternoon, the Philippines reported nearly 280,000 cases of COVID-19 with recoveries at more than 208,000 and a death toll of about 4,800.