Galvez recommends putting up 4 hospitals in NCR solely for COVID-19 treatment

MANILA, Philippines — The chief implementer of the government’s COVID-19 efforts recommended the establishment of four hospitals in Metro Manila that would be solely dedicated to COVID-19 treatment.

During a meeting of Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) members with President Rodrigo Duterte aired on Tuesday, Secretary Carlito Galvez said putting up such hospitals would not only expand the country’s capacity to treat COVID-19 but to also ensure that treatment for non-coronavirus patients would not be compromised.

Currently, only 14,594 out of the over 107,000 hospital beds in the country are dedicated to COVID-19 patients. Of these beds, 9,723 are in government hospitals.

“Ang problema po natin, kung kumakain po tayo ng percentage doon sa mga patients po na non-COVID, yung non-COVID po ang nako-compromise—yung mga tinatawag natin na may dialysis, yung mga cancer [patients]—yun po ang mga nagiging casualty,” Galvez told the President.

(Our problem here, if we utilize the percentage from the patients who are non-COVID, the non-COVID [patients] are the ones being compromised–those are what we call dialysis and cancer patients–they are becoming the casualty.)

“So ang nakikita po namin, we will be recommending na kung magkaroon po tayo ng zoning sa [National Capital Region], meron po dapat tayo na apat na COVID hospitals. Parang yung dedicated na hospitals na ginawa po ng China na in 10 days, they built COVID-19 dedicated hospitals,” he added.

(So what we see here, we will be recommending that we put up a zoning in Metro Manila, we should have four COVID hospitals. Just like the dedicated hospitals that China did, where dedicated hospitals were built in 10 days.

To date, the Philippines has so far recorded 69,898 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country. Of the number, 23,072 have so far recovered while 1,835 have died from the disease.

JPV