Philippine Covid-19 patients wait for days to be given hospital beds

MANILA • As more and more people in the Philippines fall ill with coronavirus infections, the waiting time to move from the emergency room to a ward dedicated for Covid-19 patients is about two to three days, an emergency medicine specialist said.

Dr Pauline Convocar said emergency room (ER) doctors saw a "sustained increase" in Covid-19 infections as early as mid-July, although the ER-to-ward movement, until last week, took only an average of 24 hours.

Describing a situation similar to what happened during the previous surges, she said on Tuesday that sick members of families were again arriving in clusters at hospitals, with seniors presenting severe and critical symptoms.

There are also more people now with "younger profiles" being admitted, said Dr Convocar, the immediate past president of the Philippine College of Emergency Medicine.

"It's the same trend," she said in a phone interview.

The waiting time in the emergency department depends on when a patient is discharged from the Covid-19 ward so that it can then accommodate another one, she said. The additional cots and makeshift wards that most hospitals had prepared for the surge are filling up, she added.

"The emergency department carries the burden, being the gateway, the entry point of the hospital," Dr Convocar said.

The Department of Health (DOH) on Tuesday said 68 per cent of all intensive care unit (ICU) beds and 58 per cent of all Covid-19 ward beds were occupied. It said 57 per cent of all isolation beds and 48 per cent of all mechanical ventilators were in use.

Figures from the DOH also show that on July 10, about two weeks before it disclosed local cases of the more contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus, 55 per cent of ICU beds were in use along with 46 per cent of isolation beds and 42 per cent of ward beds.

At the start of a "timeout" called by the medical community on Aug 4 last year, 55 per cent of ICU beds, 52 per cent of isolation beds and 55 per cent of ward beds were occupied. In addition, 30 per cent of ventilators were in use. Healthcare workers had called for the timeout at the time so that the government and the health sector could draw up a better plan to deal with the coronavirus crisis.

The DOH said the current positivity rate in the country was 21.9 per cent, meaning one in five people tested was positive for Sars-CoV-2. During the height of the March to April surge, the positivity rate peaked at 25 per cent.

During the surge, Metro Manila hospitals were swamped with Covid-19 patients, with long lines forming outside emergency rooms as cases soared to more than 10,000 almost daily for 12 days starting March 29.

PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER/ASIA NEWS NETWORK