Frontliners’ break not feasible yet
Despite a mentioned break for frontliners in the middle of a pandemic, a health expert on Saturday said that the government’s proposal may not yet be feasible as hospitals are not prepared for an unpredictable arrival of patients.
This came after presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said that this may possibly be the time for healthcare workers to take a rest while the utilization rate among hospitals is at around 50 percent.
“Although it is true that there is a decreasing number of patients in the hospital. the arrival of these cases is not predictable, pabugso-bugso yung arrival nila,” Dr. Jaime Almora, president of the Philippine Hospital Association said in an interview with ANC.
He said the situation varies in the hospital and the area where it is located.
In addition, he said more severe non-COVID cases are now being reported in emergency units as an effect of the hampered medical care by the pandemic.
“The number of emergency and critical cases in the hospitals are increasing, the non-COVID critical cases. These are the cases I call the quarantine effect; heart attacks, strokes,” he said.
With all of this on top of the existing shortage in manpower, Almora stressed that the fight is still far from being over.
He said he hopes that at some point this move could become possible for all healthcare workers but in the meantime the focus is on giving a good quality of medical care to all patients especially as the country is in a health crisis situation.
Based on the latest Department of Health data, the nationwide occupancy rate for all ICU, isolation and ward beds are now at 53 to 59 percent.
On the other hand, both Metro Manila and CALABARZON have somewhat close data with unoccupied beds at 45 to 51 percent.
To recall, health workers initially called for a two week time-out back in August as a means to reorganize the government’s COVID-19 strategy amid increasing cases due to more relaxed restrictions.