OVER a month since the imposition of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in Metro Manila and the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal, or the NCR Plus, there is still no significant decrease in hospital occupancy of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients, the Department of Health (DOH) said yesterday.
In a virtual press briefing, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said that while more hospital beds for COVID-19 patients are becoming available, this is not yet enough to support suggestions to ease the community restriction in the NCR Plus.
“We have been seeing a downward trend in admissions. We also see hospitals getting decongested. But these are not significant yet,” said Vergeire, noting that as of May 3, hospital occupancy of the 700 ICU beds in Metro Manila hospitals is still at 74 percent for ICU beds, while 50 percent of the 3,800 isolation beds are still occupied, and 61 percent of 2,200 ward beds are still in use.
This, Vergeire said, means that there is still no room for complacency for the DOH as well as all healthcare facilities.
Health Undersecretary Leopoldo Vega said more than 300 ICU beds have been added to Metro Manila’s hospital capacity, which is now at 1,148 from 781.
But while the healthcare utilization rate has not yet considerably improved, the health official said there has been a remarkable improvement in the number of new COVID-19 cases.
“We continue to see changes and improvements in our growth rate and average daily attack rate,” she said.
In terms of the two-week growth rate, Vergeire said that the 11 percent recorded three to four weeks ago has been reduced to negative 15 (-15) percent in the last two weeks. “This means that even though cases are still increasing, we are seeing a continuous slowdown in the last two weeks,” she said.
Similarly, the health official said the average daily attack rate has already improved from the 34 cases per 100,000 population from April 4 to 17, to 25 cases per 100,000 population from April 18 to May 1.
She added, though, that “while this is an improvement already, this is still beyond the 7 per 100,000 threshold we have set.”
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the NCR Plus must continue to keep its reproduction and attack rates down, as well as sustain improvement in its healthcare capacity including the increase in ICU and isolation beds, if it wants to lower quarantine classification by mid-May.
“There is a reason why we are in fact taking concrete steps to improve our health-care capacity. It is because the healthcare capacity is one important indicator for either the lowering or the heightening of community quarantine,” Roque said in mixed Filipino and English.
He said that if the current level of hospital utilization rate, especially the ICU beds, falls below the critical and moderate level, “then that is one factor in considering a decrease in the community classification.”
Roque said that based on his computations, which he emphasized needs to be confirmed by the DOH, the bed capacity will fall to 42.68 percent when the total bed capacity increases to 1,448 from 700 beds.
He said that if his computation is correct, NCR Plus would then need to focus on keeping the healthcare utilization rate down along with the “two-week attack rate, daily attack rate and R Naught (reproductive number)”.
The attack rate refers to the number of people who are at risk of being infected by COVID-19, while the reproductive rate refers to the number of people who will be infected by someone who is infected with COVID-19.
Roque said apart from the attack rate and reproductive rate, the status of healthcare capacity are among the factors considered by the Interagency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) in recommending the quarantine classification of provinces and regions.
President Duterted placed the NCR Plus under strict lockdown from March 29 to April due to the rapid surge in COVID-19 cases in the bubble that threatened to overwhelm the healthcare system. The Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases shifted NCR Plus to modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) last April 12.
In a related development, the DOH said the continued improvement in the country’s healthcare system as well as the reduction of COVID-19 cases make a surge similar to that of India less likely.
“Slowly, we have been able to strengthen our system. We have increased our beds. We have improved our health referral system,” she said, adding: “I think it is not comparable, population wise and setting wise.”
In addition, Vergeire noted that the Indian variant has not yet been detected in the Philippines.
“Last week, when we tried evaluating all of this processed samples, we have not yet detected the B.1.617 in the Philippines,” she said. “We are trying to strengthen our border control implementation so we can avoid its entry in the country.”Sen. Risa Hontiveros called on the government to make access easier for workers infected with COVID-19 when they claim compensation.
Hontiveros said the Department of Labor and Employment, through the Employees Compensation Commission, together with the Social Security System and the Government Service Insurance System should craft a process which will make claiming easy for infected workers.
The DOLE last week that the ECC has approved the inclusion of COVID-19 in its list of occupational and work-related diseases which can be compensable.
“The next step is to make a seamless and hassle-free process that will benefit the infected workers. I urged DOLE and ECC to immediately come up with the policy so workers will not encounter problems when applying for claims. They must immediately benefit from it especially when they were not paid while hospitalized,” Hontiveros said.
Hontiveros said that a social protection mechanism like this is badly needed as the risk of infection and hospitalization is always accompanied by a probable loss in income. Once a worker is hospitalized, he or she may be placed on several days of quarantine, or worse, be dismissed from work.
Sen. Joel Villanueva, Senate labor committee chair, said the inclusion of COVID-19 as compensable work-related disease is a welcome move given that some workers have been infected in their workplaces.
He said this would convince COVID-infected or asymptomatic ones to stay at home knowing there will be support coming from the government. — With Jocelyn Montemayor and Raymond Africa
