Taguig set to open 40-bed quarantine facility for COVID-19 patients

MANILA, Philippines – A 40-bed quarantine facility for possible COVID-19 patients will soon be opened in Taguig City’s Lower Bicutan area.

According to Taguig Mayor Lino Cayetano, the facility will be located at the Taguig Lakeshore, along C6 Road.  He said the medical facility will be complete with personal protective equipment (PPEs), with medical experts manning the site.

Cayetano said the quarantine facility will serve patients who do not need to be admitted to hospitals and need a place to stay, so they would not be infecting others.

“We will have volunteers that we will train then we will have full PPE’s then ideally we will have a few medical professionals to manage the whole place dahil andon din sila sa ibang facilities natin,” Cayetano said.

“More than 80 percent of our countrymen (who are infected with COVID-19) do not need to be hospitalized but even you don’t need to be admitted, there is a huge chance that you could infect others,” he added.

The quarantine facility will serve as a place for possible COVID-19 patients who do not have a place to stay in isolation while waiting for test results.  If the patients test negative for the coronavirus, then they can return to their homes.

As of now, there are five quarantine facilities in the city, as the local government has repurposed former sites including a former persons with disability (PWD) center, a new building in Katwiran, Ibayo Tipas, a building in the Technological University of the Philippines (TUP) Taguig; and the Hagonoy Sports Complex.

These will act as temporary facilities to house patients under investigation (PUIs) and persons under monitoring (PUMs).  Meanwhile, mass testing in the city will start by Wednesday.

Taguig has recorded 180 confirmed COVID-19 cases, 13 of which have died while 22 have recovered.  Nationwide, the Department of Health (DOH) said there are now 6,259 COVID-19 patients in the country. Of this number, 409 have died while at least 572 have recovered from the disease.

All over the world, there are over 2.33 million individuals infected with the coronavirus, 155,689 have died and another 599,692 have recovered from it.

READ: DOH: PH now has over 6,000 people positive for COVID-19 virus

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