PGH belies social media claim it is swamped by COVID cases

FRONT-LINE The government’s premier medical facility, the Philippine General Hospital. MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

Healthcare resources at the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) are not strained by COVID-19 cases, the hospital’s head of infectious diseases said on Friday, disputing claims on social media that a surge in coronavirus cases is testing the capacity of the top referral facility on the disease.

A Facebook post that has been shared since last week on other social media platforms warns netizens about the supposed COVID-19 situation at PGH.

“Please remind our sisters and brothers to follow COVID precautions. The week before Easter we were averaging 150 cases a day, Holy Week the average was 300 and this week it is 500,” went the post which claimed to have been made by a hospital staff member.

But Dr. Anna Ong-Lim, chief of the hospital’s infectious and tropical diseases section and professor of pediatrics at PGH, said that, on the contrary, coronavirus cases have been much less than those numbers.

“It’s not true ….We’re one of the very few pediatric specialty centers for COVID. And we are very blessed that we have been able to decommission the pediatric COVID wards for several months already,” Lim told reporters. As for adult cases, PGH only had six patients admitted for COVID-19 as of last week.

Cases nationwide

In early March, PGH opened its COVID-19 isolation ward to other patients with highly infectious illnesses, such as tuberculosis, as it expanded operations that used to focus only on coronavirus cases.

There has been an increase, however, in COVID-19 infections nationwide, as average daily cases climbed to 450 cases this week from 341 last week, according to the latest bulletin of the Department of Health (DOH).

Meanwhile, the positivity rate, or the percentage of people who test positive, continues to climb further past the 5-percent threshold recommended by the World Health Organization—from 8.4 percent on April 19 to 13.4 percent on Wednesday.

Still, infectious diseases expert Dr. Rontgene Solante said the country remains “in stable condition, even with this increase in cases.”

“This is driven by the fact that there are still no signals that hospitals will reach full capacity,” he said at Friday’s Laging Handa briefing.

He also said the wearing of face masks need not be made compulsory again.

Nevertheless, he recommended that vulnerable individuals keep their masks on, especially in high-risk areas.

Ong said the public should continue wearing masks to “maximize” this protection against COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.

READ: 86% of COVID-19 patients at PGH unvaccinated, says spokesman