DOH sees shortage of front-liners if infection trend continues

The Department of Health (DOH) is worried that if the current trend of infection among health-care workers continues, the country may soon face a shortage of medical front-liners who can attend to coronavirus patients.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire expressed the agency’s concern on Friday as she reported 284 new COVID-19 (new coronavirus disease) infections in the country, bringing the national tally to 8,772.

The total number of recovered patients increased to 1,084, with the recovery of 41 more patients.The total death toll rose to 579 as 11 more patients died.

Out of the current 8,772 confirmed COVID-19 cases, Vergeire said, 1,694 are health-care workers, or one out of every five infections.

Majority of the infected health workers are nurses (638) and doctors (566). To date, 33 health-care workers have died from the severe respiratory disease, or 5 percent of the total 579 recorded deaths.

WHO alarmed

“We are saddened by this [development] because if this trend [will] continue, we might reach the point where we would have a shortage of those who could attend to our patients,” Vergeire said in an online press briefing.

Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) sounded the alarm over the high rate of infection among Filipino health workers, who accounted for 13 percent of confirmed Philippine cases at that time.

The figure was more than four times higher than the 2-to 3-percent average in the Western Pacific region that includes China, where the virus that has so far afflicted more than 3.2 million people worldwide originated.

Vergeire earlier said one of the reasons for the high infection rate among health workers was their exposure to patients who provided incomplete information about their travel history or past contact with known cases.

Also cited was the shortage of personal protective equipment and the inadequate safety measures in some hospitals.

Vergeire said some health workers might also have contracted the disease from their home communities, like what happened at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) in Muntinlupa City where an employee, who regularly commuted between her house and the RITM, was tagged as the likely source of the infection at the government facility.

Funding assured

She said the DOH continued to look for ways to provide lodgings for health workers to reduce their risk of being infected.

The DOH has also launched an emergency hiring program, recruiting an initial 499 new health workers to start filling up 2,000 slots.

Vergeire also maintained that the DOH had been assured of sufficient funding, even though the Department of Finance earlier reported a dip in tax collections from tobacco and alcoholic products, revenues earmarked to fund the government’s universal health care (UHC) program.

“The DOH and the UHC budget for 2020 was approved based on tax collections from last year. We are assured of the budget for this year,” she said.

Meanwhile, the University of the Philippines National Institutes of Health (UP-NIH) reminded the elderly not to miss their flu shots, especially since they are likely to be treated as COVID-19 patients if they get sick.

Shelley dela Vega, director of UP-NIH Institute on Aging, said elderly people should be vaccinated against flu and pneumonia, which have symptoms similar to those of COVID-19.

“The flu vaccine is not for COVID-19 but this can help prevent you from getting sick from influenza. It’s because if you exhibit [flu-like] symptoms, you may be treated as a COVID-19 case,” Dela Vega said.

As of Thursday, elderly patients accounted for 2,237 COVID-19 cases, or more than a quarter of the total 8,488 cases in the country.

The DOH earlier noted that last year barely 3 percent of Filipinos age 60 years and above were vaccinated against influenza and pneumonia at public health centers.