DAVAO CITY—Two administrative employees of Mindanao’s front line hospital in the battle against coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19) died in the last two weeks, highlighting the risks that the virus presents to health care professionals but also other hospital workers.
Dr. Leopoldo Vega, chief of hospital of the Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC), said the two administrative personnel were among 12 hospital workers who tested positive for coronavirus last week.
They were both diabetic and hypertensive, underlying conditions that made them vulnerable to the virus that originated in Wuhan, a highly progressive city in China’s Hubei province, and has now spread to the rest of the world, Vega said.
He said the first administrative employee to die last week was a 62-year-old woman who had not traveled to any infected place but could have caught the virus while working at the hospital as a billing clerk. The employee had previous lung injury.
On Wednesday (April 15), another administrative employee at SPMC died. He was a 57-year old man who both had a history of travel to Manila and exposure to a carrier, Vega said.
Unlike health care professionals who directly deal with infected patients and are priority in PPE use, administrative employees wear only masks and gloves for protection in the hospital since they don’t have direct encounters with patients.
Vega said he made sure that all of the 300 hospital workers assigned to the hospital’s emergency room, isolation section, intensive care unit and pay ward are tested for the virus.
But aside from the two workers who died, only three—one more administrative employee and two nurses—remained confined in SPMC for COVID-19.
The rest, mostly nurses, showed only mild symptoms and were sent on home quarantine, Vega said.
Dr. Ricardo Audan, SPMC chief of clinics, said those who died were administrative employees and not health professionals on the front line of the fight against COVID-19.
Front liners, he said, are “basically the doctors and nurses who have direct interaction with the patient.”