Angeles City’s COVID-19 intensive care capacity still at critical level

ANGELES CITY––The facilities for intensive care units (ICU) in this city remain at a critical level, data from the Department of Health (DOH) showed.

The DOH COVID-19 Tracker website as of Sept. 21 showed that the 10 hospitals in this city and the Angeles City-side of the Clark Freeport Zone only have 40 ICU beds for coronavirus disease patients. Of these, 35 were occupied.

The hospitals have a combined 136 isolation beds, of which only 36 remain vacant.

These 10 hospitals include the Rafael Lazatin Memorial Medical Center (formerly known as Ospital Ning Angeles) that has no ICU and isolation beds. It only has 72 ward beds, 65 of which were occupied as of Sept. 21.

Also on the list is the Air Force City Hospital in Clark Freeport, which has no ICU beds. It has 12 isolation beds, but 11 of them were occupied.

The hospitals have a total of 26 mechanical ventilators, but only four were available.

While the DOH said that 100 percent of the medical facilities have been submitting their occupancy rates to the health agency, the Inquirer learned that the reality on the ground is worse than the online data.

Recently, a COVID-19 patient, with critical symptoms, from the neighboring Mabalacat City was transported via a local government ambulance to this city to find an ICU bed.

The ambulance went to several private hospitals without finding any vacancy until the medical tank in the emergency vehicle was about to run out of oxygen.

“One of the hospitals told us that we’re number 26 on the waiting list.
In another hospital, we’re number 50. There were many others in the queue who needed intensive care,” the family member of the patient said.

The medical frontliners assisting the patient had no choice but to bring him back to his residence. He died after several hours.

This city has 1,466 active COVID-19 cases as of Wednesday, Sept. 22.

The city government said 480 isolation rooms in several hotels here were being used by COVID-19 patients who are asymptomatic or with mild symptoms.

Of these, 230 were equipped with electric fans and were free for indigents. The remaining 220 isolation rooms were for non-indigents who pay 50 percent of the daily hotel room rates.

Mayor Carmelo Lazatin Jr.’s administration does not allow home quarantine for asymptomatic and those with mild symptoms. It makes it mandatory for patients to go to designated isolation facilities, although the number of patients far exceeds the number of available isolation rooms.

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