Top Cebu doctor urges residents not to discriminate vs health workers

CEBU CITY – Stop discriminating against health workers.

This was the appeal of Dr. Jaime Bernadas, director of the Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH-7), to the public amid the fight against the novel coronavirus or COVID-19.

He said some medicall staffs were not allowed by their landlords to stay in their boarding houses that they were renting.

“The ones handling COVID patients are housed at dormitories inside the hospitals. They are sacrificing so much for us so please do not discriminate,” the regional director said.

As a protocol, frontliners at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City have been doing a 15-day shift routine. This means that a health professional is only allowed to work for 15 days and then given a 15-day quarantine inside a dormitory within the hospital facility.

If any of the health workers or doctors exhibit signs of COVID-19, they will be automatically tested and placed inside a special ward for frontliners, Bernadas said.

“There are those who have shown symptoms already. They were tested and fortunately not one of them tested positive for the COVID-19,” he said.

Bernadas said three doctors in Cebu were infected by COVID-19 but they were not handling patients who tested positive for the virus in the hospitals.

As of April 4, Saturday, Cebu has not recorded a new COVID-19 case.

The confirmed COVID-19 cases in Cebu is still pegged at 29 with four deaths.

On the other hand, eight patients have already been tagged as “recoveries.” This means that there are only 17 existing patients left confined at the hospitals.

The entire Province of Cebu including its independent cities is currently under a state of Enhanced Community Quarantine or what local officials coined as a “lockdown.”

AU