Philippine Heart Center bars visitors, cites rising COVID cases

The Philippine Heart Center (Photo from its Facebook page)

Due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the country, the Philippine Heart Center (PHC) in Quezon City has temporarily barred the entry of visitors.

In an advisory posted on its website, PHC said it was enforcing a “no-visitor policy until further notice.”

This is “to prevent the spread of the disease among its clients, healthcare workers, and support personnel” and maintain full-service delivery to the patients.

Dr. Gerardo Manzo, PHC deputy executive director for medical services, said the restriction was intended to “keep PHC open 100 percent for heart patients.”

“We already know what happened to us when COVID-19 was at its peak, and we don’t want to get to that point,” Manzo added.

Visits may resume once the rate of COVID-19 transmission slows down and “we are again at a better situation,” he said.

Daily COVID-19 infections nationwide have remained above the 1,000 level for three straight days.

New cases

Based on the monitoring conducted by the Department of Health, the country logged 1,503 new cases on Wednesday, pushing the number of confirmed active cases or those confirmed to have

COVID-19, to 15,514. The current case count is slightly higher than the 1,088 new infections recorded on Tuesday.

Since the pandemic began three years ago, DOH-recorded COVID-19 cases in the country have reached a total of 4,119,516.

At the PHC on Thursday, there were a total of five patients admitted for COVID-19, three of whom were considered “severe but not critical,” Manzo said.

Since February, the specialty hospital has been maintaining a 14-bed ward for Covid-positive individuals and COVID-suspect patients.

COVID-19 infections among PHC personnel have been increasing in the last two months.

From 18 infected health-care workers in March, the number rose to 118 this month.

But Manzo remained confident that the numbers were still manageable. “We are not afraid of a COVID surge because the patients do not really get severely ill, and we have very few patients…And we are able to manage all of them,” he said.

g/