MANILA, Philippines — The management of St. Luke's Medical Center on Tuesday said that their two main hospitals located in Quezon City and Taguig will no longer accommodate COVID-19-infected patients for confinement since both have currently reached their full capacity.
"Both hospitals have already exceeded maximum capacity and admitting more COVID-19 patients will seriously impact our ability to deliver the critical level of care and attention patients need at this time. We are also treating non-covid patients on other floors in which their health conditions cannot be compromised," St. Lukes said in a statement posted Tuesday afternoon.
St Luke's Medical Center Quezon City (SLMC-QC) and Global City (SLMC-GC) are collectively caring for 48 COVID-19 patients, as well as 139 patients under investigation and 592 of its own frontline healthcare workers under quarantine.
"While it is our desire to extend quality healthcare to every patient that needs our help, we can only do so much at this point,” the private healthcare provider said.
However, St. Lukes reassured patients and others concerned that it will still provide outpatient testing for COVID-19 to those who qualify under the Department of Health’s criteria.
“We send the collected specimen for testing to the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM). The RITM will then release the result to SLMC once it becomes available,” it said.
St. Luke's also said that its hospitals' emergency rooms will remain open 24/7 for other medical services.
"Given this situation, we urge everyone to practice personal preventive measures to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Please help us flatten the curve by staying at home. Protecting ourselves means protecting the health of our loved ones as well.”
Last week, St. Lukes and 10 other private hospitals appealed to the Health department to centralize COVID-19 response efforts due to the inadequacy of their current facilities to accommodate all patients.
“The panic is escalating, mortality is increasing, our supplies of [PPE] are running short, our frontline staff are increasingly getting depleted as more of them are quarantined or physically and emotionally exhausted, and a number of our medical colleagues are already hooked to respirators fighting for their lives in various ICUs (intensive care units),” read their collective statement, which was signed by St. Luke's Chief Medical Officer doctor Benjamin Camponanes Jr.
RELATED: FULL TEXT: Appeal of 11 private hospitals to DOH amid COVID-19 crisis