1,000 health workers on standby for virus cases
BAGUIO CITY: Some 1,000 health workers are on standby at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center (BGHMC) to render round-the-clock service for persons under investigation ( PUIs) and presumptive coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases in the city.
The BGHMC is one of sub-national laboratories approved by the Department of Health to operate alongside the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine in Mandaluyong City to process coronavirus tests. These laboratories are able to process between 50-300 tests daily.
BGHMC chief Dr. Ricardo Ruñez said the hospital’s available workforce include some 400 doctors and 600 nurses to take swab samples and perform screening tests of PUIs and care for Covid-19 patients.
Ruñez said the health workers would be mobilized on rotation
to avoid exhaustion and depletion of the workforce in the event of a worst-case scenario.
He said the hospital was also accepting volunteer health workers to augment the workforce.
The BGHMC chief urged the public to cooperate with the efforts of the local government and health authorities on the enhanced community quarantine and stay at home to prevent exposure to PUIs and presumptive Covid- 19 patients, potentially acquiring the disease themselves.
As a sub-national testing center, BGHMC will perform the initial screening of swab samples of PUIs from the different private and public hospitals in Northern Luzon, after which these will be transmitted to the RITM for confirmatory tests.
The hospital has also 19 available isolation rooms.
Covid disclosure
Baguio City has 12 confirmed Covid- 19 patients, including three who fully disclosed their condition.
Responding to Mayor Benjamin Magalong’s call to save lives by revealing their identities to facilitate contact tracing, spouses Enrique and Jaysay Bactad, both 67, from Las Piñas City disclosed their circumstances on Sunday.
They came to the decision a day after Joel Junsay, from the City Health Services Office, shed his privacy to be of help in containing the coronavirus. Junsay is the city’s first case of local transmission.
The Bactads were experiencing low grade fever when they went up to Baguio last March 15 for Enrique’s regular check-up with his doctor here. Jaysay started to have fever since March 11, authorities said.
They stayed in Jaysay’s maternal home at Tacay Road in Central Guisad on March 15 and 16 and had a check-up at Notre Dame de Chartres Hospital on March 17 when Jaysay had a swab test.
She was later confined at the St Louis University Hospital of the Sacred Heart while Enrique was quarantined at home. He was later confined at Notre Dame March 25 due to fever.
All known contacts in Las Piñas and in Baguio had been put on quarantine.
The couple said on their way to Baguio City, they stopped at Petron in North Luzon Expressway and briefly at a relative’s place in Nancayasan, Urdaneta City.
Their results were received on Saturday.
Mayor Magalong appreciated the “very positive feedback and response from the public when we disclosed the name of Joel Junsay,” expressing hope that more patients will follow.
All three patients are on the road to recovery, according to the mayor.
Meanwhile, Magalong called on landlords not to drive away health workers from their boarding houses as they had been taking care of virus patients at the expense of their own lives.
He said health workers do not deserve discrimination and stigma at these trying times when the help of everyone is needed to overcome the coronavirus pandemic.
Magalong joined BGHMC health officials in assuring the public that health workers were properly equipped with personal protective equipment (PPE) before they were allowed to attend to such highly contagious cases, and are thus free of the virus once they get home.