PGH says COVID-19 patients decreased but ICU, COVID-19 beds still almost full

The number of confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients in the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) has decreased compared to the past two weeks, spokesman Dr. Jonas Del Rosario said Wednesday.

In an interview on CNN, Del Rosario said there are currently 237 confirmed patients occupying the hospital’s 325 beds, lower than the 355 patients the hospital housed two weeks ago.

“That’s roughly about 75% occupancy. But we still have a lot of patients who are severe and critically ill, which makes our ICU beds always full,” Del Rosario said, adding that they still get a steady supply of walk-in patients to the emergency room.

The spokesman also said the wait of COVID-19 patients seeking admission is shorter with patients getting transferred from the emergency room to the ward in one to two days.

“One good thing about the situation now is the emergency room is not teeming with patients. And so they come in, they can be seen in the ER or at least be stabilized. Before they were not even allowed to go to the ER,” he said.

However, due to the high occupancy rate of their intensive care unit beds, Del Rosario said severe COVID-19 cases or those in critical condition may wait longer. 

“The only limitation that we have is the ICU are still quite full. And so those who are critical or severely ill who might need intubation or high flow oxygen might need to wait a little longer,” he said.

Del Rosario also expressed hope that patients will continue to decrease.

“We are able to manage much better now compared to what we were experiencing two weeks ago,” he said.

“We are hoping that the numbers will progressively decrease because as long as we have more than 200 patients in PGH, our healthcare workers are usually tied up in the COVID operations,” he added.

The Philippines has logged a total of 2,613,070 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of Tuesday. —KG, GMA News