Schools being prepped as isolation centers

MANILA, Philippines — Public and private schools in Metro Manila are being prepared to serve as isolation centers, the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) reported yesterday.

PRC chairman Sen. Richard Gordon said they will be working with Metro Manila local government units (LGUs) in setting up additional isolation centers as the health care system is becoming overwhelmed.

Gordon said the PRC will provide ambulances to transport patients to isolation centers and set-up isolation beds as well as provide supplementary hot meals. The agency will also put up shower rooms for their daily hygiene needs, ensure daily monitoring of their condition and provide ambulances to transport patients to hospitals who, while in isolation, develop moderate to severe symptoms.

“We can be more effective if we can work together for the same purpose. Our purpose is to lower the growing number of COVID-19 infected from inside. We need to get them out so there won’t be more infected. With multi-generation households, most often those who bring home COVID are those who go out to work and infect the ones they live with, especially their parents or others who are elderly who end up dying. So, they need to be taken out of the house so they won’t infect others,” Gordon explained in Filipino and English.

The LGUs will coordinate the operations of these facilities with the barangay leadership in the zonal areas, assign security personnel for the orderly operations of the facility and provide regular nutritious meals.

LGUs will also provide at least one local counterpart to man the area, ensure daily monitoring of their household contacts for possible infection and coordinate with local government hospitals for the immediate confinement of patients transferred from these isolation facilities.

PRC also reported that it has conducted 44 percent of the total COVID-19 tests done in the country.

Based on Department of Health (DOH) data, the tests conducted on April 2 totalled 33,800, while a report from the PRC showed that it conducted a total of 14,900 tests as of midnight of the same day.

The testing of more people, Gordon said, would ensure that those who are infected would be isolated, treated and their contacts would be traced to prevent the further spread of the virus.

“It is very important that many get tested so that they are immediately separated from their families, so they won’t infect others and be given the proper treatment, especially now that there are new variants that are even more infectious. That’s why we continuously upgrade our operations so we can ramp up testing,” Gordon explained.

Facilities urgently needed

Meanwhile, Sen. Bong Go appealed yesterday to concerned government agencies and willing members of the private sector to expedite the construction and expansion of modular facilities and tents equipped with COVID-19 isolation equipment and ICU beds to cater to severe to critical cases.

He cited continuing efforts of the government to provide more isolation facilities for people with mild and moderate COVID-19 cases. However, there is also urgent need for facilities that can handle severe and critical condition.

“In order to maximize our resources, I urge the government to identify locations where we can install these modular facilities and tents equipped with ICU beds, or existing structures that can be transformed into temporary health facilities to accommodate severe COVID-19 cases.” Go said in a statement.

“We need to double our efforts in order to reduce further the waiting time for patients needing urgent treatment or admission, provide faster medical transport and patient pick-up and facilitate much improved use of critical care services in our health facilities,” he said.

He called attention to the cases where COVID-19 patients close to death could not find open hospitals.

“Every minute waiting for an available hospital is a matter of life and death for them,” Go said in Filipino.

He also called for the augmentation of medical frontliners in critical areas where a significant number of them are now overworked or infected with COVID-19.

“I appeal to our health workers in other parts of the country with lower COVID-19 cases to also be ready to extend help in critical areas. In these trying times, we need a whole-of-nation approach to fully overcome this pandemic,” he said.

Sen. Joel Villanueva, who chairs the Senate labor committee, in the meantime said the government’s crisis managers should consider regrouping and have a “level-headed” assessment of its existing approaches by calling in hospital administrators and bring in more experts to the discussion table to map out a more effective response.

He warned the various lockdowns imposed by the government that directly affect lives and livelihoods of Filipinos would be wasted if the DOH has no clear plans to control the spread of COVID-19.

“Our unsolicited and respectful suggestion is for the President to get unfiltered reports from those on the frontlines, from hospital directors who can give him the true picture at the ground. To his credit, the President likes to mingle with the boots on the ground. But now is the time for him to hear stories of those who are in the different but more dangerous trenches,” Villanueva said.

“It would be a great help in the fight against the pandemic if he (Duterte) is able to speak with those always in PPEs, and not those reporting via PPT or PowerPoint presentations,” he said in Filipino.