Bacolod is Cimatu’s next COVID mission

BACOLOD CITY, Negros Occidental, Philippines — After helping Cebu City bring down its coronavirus cases, Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu is headed to this provincial capital of Negros Occidental to help the city manage the number of infections that has overwhelmed its hospitals and medical personnel.

Bacolod Mayor Evelio Leonardia said Sen. Bong Go informed him that Cimatu would be in the city accompanied by retired military officer Mel Feliciano and Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Dino. Cimatu’s team arrived here on Wednesday afternoon, a day earlier than his original schedule.

“We want to assure you that the national government is here to help you. We will support you all the way,” Dino said in a statement.

Leonardia on Tuesday sent an “emergency and urgent appeal” to President Rodrigo Duterte to deploy an augmentation team of 150 nurses, 20 doctors and 30 medical technologists from the Department of Health (DOH) to Bacolod as an “emergency stop-gap measure” before the local health-care system bogs down due to a surge in COVID-19 cases.

He said the recent spike in local transmissions had filled up the 149 COVID-19 beds in seven hospitals in the city.

“The situation has worsened because many of the medical staff in these hospitals had tested positive for the virus and had to go on quarantine [or] isolation and they have not yet reported back to work, while several others have resigned or have gone absent without [official] leave (Awol). Most of these personnel are nurses,” the mayor said in a letter to the President.

“An augmentation team can alternate with the staff that are still on duty at these hospitals or fill up the gap for those who are still on quarantine,” he added.

Hospitals full

Since Sunday, Bacolod hospitals have turned down COVID-19 patients or those with symptoms of the disease since they were full and had no more doctors and nurses to take care of them.

Leonardia said some patients had died in their homes since they could not be admitted to the hospitals.

He said Carlito Galvez Jr., chief implementer of the National Task Force Against COVID-19, had informed him that the national government would deploy health personnel and ask city hotels to serve as “bend-down” facilities for recovering patients so hospitals would be able to admit critically ill patients.

Medical workers neededIn June, President Duterte appointed Cimatu to oversee the government’s COVID-19 response in Cebu City, which was then considered the second “epicenter” and a hot spot of the virus after Metro Manila.

Cimatu and his team managed to reduce the number of infections there after about a month.Dr. Marlyn Convocar, the DOH director in Western Visayas, said hospital beds for COVID-19 patients in Bacolod had to be increased while more medical personnel should be deployed to meet the rising number of cases.

As of Aug. 24, Negros Occidental had recorded 966 cases of COVID-19. Bacolod had 749.

Negros Occidental and Bacolod will implement a lockdown during the proposed “timeout weekend” from Aug. 28 to Aug. 31 to conduct free testing of 10,000 people.