Makati goes hard in Delta battle

The country’s financial district is not taking the Delta variant lightly as it prepares to build a field hospital to increase Covid bed capacity in the city.

Makati City Mayor Abby Binay said the construction of the field hospital, located near the Ospital ng Makati in Barangay Pembo, was triggered by the increasing number of asymptomatic cases of Covid-19.

For now, Mayor Binay said granular lockdowns will be implemented in several Covid-19 hotspots in the city.

“There will be a series of other granular lockdowns that we will be implementing, because we learned there are a lot of asymptomatic cases in the city — the spreaders. So, we will be implementing more lockdowns,” Binay explained.

The Makati mayor said the Delta variant is not necessarily more virulent or more deadly, but it is access to health care services that will cause the spike of deaths caused by Covid-19.

She added the city government will distribute home care Covid-19 kits for those who are under home quarantine, apart from a supply of vitamins, on top of regular monitoring and contact tracing.

The Makati mayor said the Delta variant is not necessarily more virulent or more deadly, but it is access to health care services that will cause the spike of deaths caused by Covid-19.

The city government has also procured oxygen tanks and oxygenators in preparation for the Delta variant.

Makati has two city hospitals, namely Ospital ng Makati and Makati Medical Center, which cater to Covid patients.

She admitted it is not easy to just increase the number of hospital beds, because this also needs additional nurses, and most of the city’s nurses are now deployed to vaccination sites.

She said they are now pulling out their nurses from the vaccination sites in order to care for Covid-19 patients again.

Earlier, Binay placed under a localized enhanced community quarantine Umbel Street in Barangay Pembo last Saturday,

24 July 2021, due to a suspected Delta variant infection in a household in the area.