The Philippine General Hospital (PGH) announced Friday that it would only accept life-threatening cases in its emergency room while it expands its COVID-19 wards amid the surge of cases in Metro Manila.
According to PGH spokesperson Dr. Jonas del Rosario, the government hospital would convert two regular wards into COVID-19 rooms to accommodate more patients.
The hospital also announced that they will no longer accept non-COVID cases in its emergency room unless they are “life- or limb-threatening cases.”
“‘Yung aming wards na non-COVID, para matugunan ang mga pangangailangan ng aming mga pasyente sa COVID eh kailangan naming bawasan at yung nurses at ibang doktor doon ililipat na ulit sa COVID,” Del Rosario said.
(To respond to the needs of our patients, we will reduce our non-COVID wards and we will transfer our nurses and doctors to the COVID wards.)
The PGH spokesperson said the public should go to other hospitals for treatment as PGH would have to focus on COVID-19 cases for now.
There are 196 COVID-19 patients in PGH now and it only has 230 beds allocated for COVID-19 cases.
PGH will only accept life-threatening cases in ER
Del Rosario said PGH could only expand its capacity to 250 as long as there are doctors and nurses who will oversee the wards.
However, the official said they lack manpower in the COVID-19 wards as some of their healthcare workers also tested positive for the disease.
“Nagkaron kami ng temporary na shortage kasi tinatapos po nila ang kanilang quarantine. May mga pabalik na po sa quarantine at ang ginawa po namin solusyon eH sinuspend muna namin ang aming mga non-COVID procedures,” he said.
(We are having a temporary shortage of our healthcare workers because they are still completing their quarantine period. So we came up with a solution which is suspending our non-COVID procedures.)
OCTA Research group said the occupancy rate of the intensive care units (ICUs) of hospitals in Metro Manila has reached a critical level.
Based on the group’s record on Wednesday, hospital bed occupancy of patients with COVID-19 increased by 61 percent.