Govt to offer home quarantine services

THE government will unify its medical services for patients infected with the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) who are under home quarantine, the Department of Health (DoH) said on Wednesday.

It will integrate its telemedicine, triage or screening to determine where patients should go for treatment and the One Covid-19 Referral Center system for effective monitoring by a primary care physician, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire told reporters.

Vergeire said hospital utilization rate in Metro Manila was at 67 percent, or in the “moderate risk” category, which means 84 percent of intensive care unit (ICU) beds were in use.

Vergeire said to allow hospitals to accommodate more patients, some had signed memoranda of agreements with different mega quarantine facilities to provide step-down care after their recovery while those undergoing home quarantine should inform their local government units (LGUs) that they have been infected and are staying at home so that they can be monitored by their health officials

such as the Barangay Health Response Team.

The DoH also urged those undergoing home quarantine to have internet links so that they can easily access the DoH telemedicine partners for better monitoring.

“Gusto natin ang home care naka-akibat po ‘yan sa telemedicine para guided ang mga kababayan kung gagawin sila ng home care (We want those undergoing home care to be integrated with telemedicine so that they will be guided on how they will conduct home care),” Vergeire said.

The DoH plans to expand its telemedicine services for those on home quarantine to include contacts to the triage system of LGUs and the One Covid-19 Referral Center as well as instant access to primary health care physicians.

“These home care services, pwede rin silang bisitahin ng mga primary care physicians na nakalink sa referral system natin, and most important, may financing mechanism tayo kaya nakikipagusap tayo sa PhilHealth (they can be visited by primary care physicians...who are linked to our referral system, and most important, we have a financing system that’s why we are talking to PhilHealth),” Vergeire added, referring to the Philippine Health Insurance Corp.

Vergeire warned, however, that those experiencing severe symptoms should not undergo home quarantine and must be transferred to a facility to allow health care workers to monitor their condition.

“Tumawag ho kayo sa (Please call your) local government units so that they can give your assistance, either they can bring you to a hospital or an isolation facility,”

Vergeire said.

Vergeire said there were many factors as to why the hospital care utilization rate remained high, chief of which is the increasing number of Covid-19 cases although the daily average has remained “stable.”

She said those with mild or moderate symptoms might progress into severe and critical cases, necessitating a move to the ICU and providing longer care, which takes a minimum of 21 days.

Mild, moderate and asymptomatic cases also comprise 41 percent of all hospital admissions in the National Capital Region.

‘Oplan Recovery’

Vergeire is optimistic that more recoveries will be counted in the coming days as the DoH will implement “Oplan Recovery,” a daily, time-based tagging of recovered mild and asymptomatic patients to better reflect the numbers of those active cases against those who have recovered.

The country has posted more than 103,000 recoveries over the past three days, with the highest at 72,607 last Sunday.

Vergeire said based on analysis, the previous protocol was “skewed” toward the active cases.

This is why Health Secretary Francisco Duque 3rd ordered the DoH Epidemiology Bureau to release a more accurate picture of the total number of active cases by conducting daily, time-based tagging of mild and asymptomatic cases.

“Most of the cases are mild and asymptomatic, kaya marami po ang nakakarecover, kaya tumataas din ang mga kaso, (that’s why many people are recovering, and that is also the reason why the number of cases are high),“Vergeire said.

She said those who are mild and asymptomatic would be tagged under the time-based recovery system but admitted that there could be some errors in reporting.

“Tinitingnan po natin lahat ng aspeto (We are looking at all aspects) because a person who gets sick of Covid-19 can progress to severe, can be hospitalized and can even die, so titingnan po natin lahat ng aspeto na ‘yan (so we will look at all those aspects)... But there is also that room na nagkakaroon ng (for) error,” Vergeire said.

Meanwhile, the DoH said it expected to see results of rapid antigen tests to be included in the case bulletins as part of expanding its testing capacity without resorting to “mass testing” or testing every single member of the population.

As of Wednesday, the DoH reported 19, 699 new recoveries and 9,227 new active cases. It is the fourth straight day that the country has reported more recoveries than infections. The total number of recoveries is at 829,608, or 86.2 percent of the 962,307 Covid cases nationwide.