Salceda to NTF: Use Holy Week break to beef up healthcare capacity

Albay Representative Joey Salceda on Thursday urged the National Task Force on COVID-19 to ensure that the Holy Week break is used to expand the country’s healthcare capacity, testing and supply of therapeutics for COVID-19.

“We are seeing some stubbornness in the daily cases. Positivity rate is also continuing to show signs of increasing. Because people who are testing now probably got infected last week, before the lockdown, we will only see declines due to the [enhanced community quarantine] next week and the week after that,” he said in a statement.

According to Salceda, his team calculated that the positivity rate as of March 30 was still at 21.08%, which is higher than positivity rates from previous days during the ECQ.

“If we test more, we will detect more cases, so we will have to prepare to isolate and treat more people, too. It’s the only way to prevent more infections,” the lawmaker said.

Salceda said the country should ideally have a minimum of 100,000 tests per day.

“At 21% positivity rate, we should be ready for at least 21,000 vacant isolation beds per day, and, at the rate we are seeing, at least 195 hospital beds, including around 7 new ICU facilities must be installed every day,” he added.

Otherwise, he said, patients will die because hospitals are full and unable to treat them.

Further, Salceda recommended an information dashboard to help first responders and families determine which facilities can still take critical patients in.

“Immediately, we need a central information system for letting families and first responders know what facilities are still available. We also have to be very clear about the triage. A few hours of confusion in critical cases can result in the death of an otherwise treatable patient,” he said.

“Right now, families still go through full hospitals, and are turned down three, four times. The delay results in death, because you don’t have much time when you can’t breathe. Urgent information on hospital capacity will save lives. And it’s not that hard to do, so we should do it,” Salceda added.

Earlier, Dr. Jaime Almora, the president of the Philippine Hospital Association, said hospitals are already "overwhelmed and overrun" mainly due to their depleted and overworked manpower.

The severity of the situation prompted Almora to say that the country has already "lost" amid the war against the coronavirus, a statement Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire opposed.

The country has so far recorded 756,199 confirmed cases of COVID-19 including 138,948 active cases, 603,948 recoveries and 13,303 deaths. — Ma. Angelica Garcia/BM, GMA News