NKTI reaches ‘danger zone’ of COVID-19 bed capacity

MANILA, Philippines — The National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI), the country’s prime kidney and dialysis center, has announced that they are already in the “danger zone” of their designated bed capacity for COVID-19 patients.

According to an advisory from NKTI on Monday, they also recorded a significant increase in the number of infections among their health workers, especially from their frontline personnel.

“This is to inform you the general public that the National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI), has already reached the ‘danger zone’ in the utilization of the designated bed capacity for COVID-19 patients as of today, July 13, 2020,” the facility said in a statement posted in their Facebook page.

“Despite our continuous efforts to ensure the safety and well-being of our employees, we still recorded a significant increase in the number of infection rate among health care workers, particularly with our front-line personnel, in the last two weeks,” they added.

The institute asked the public and other hospitals to refer their COVID-19 patients — whether suspected, confirmed, or critically ill — to other facilities for now.

NKTI also vowed to do decontamination of their facilities to prevent localized transmissions inside the center.

“Consequently, we humbly request the public and other healthcare facilities to refer their critically ill, probable, or suspected COVID-19 patients to other healthcare facilities for immediate care and management,” NKTI said.

“However, NKTI emergency room staff shall continue to acutely manage only renal emergency cases and post kidney transplant patients. Non-COVID and non-pneumonia patients may be seen at the outpatient services (OPS) and admitted accordingly,” they added.

NKTI’s announcement came on the same day that three large private hospitals in Metro Manila — St. Luke’s Hospital’s Quezon City and Taguig branches and the Makati Medical Center — confirmed that they can no longer accept new COVID-19 cases due to full bed capacity.

St. Luke’s Hospital’s management said that their intensive care unit beds have also reached full capacity, while Makati Medical Center has “reached its threshold in its capacity to respond to more COVID-19 patients.”

Earlier, the Department of Health (DOH) said that there are now 57,006 confirmed COVID-19 cases nationwide — with 1,559 patients dead and 20,371 recovered.

DOH recorded 65 deaths on Monday and 162 deaths on Sunday, although they clarified that this included deaths recorded months ago, which were just recently validated. [ac]