MORE medical frontliners are getting sick, as the number has already reached a total of 1,146, the Department of Health (DOH)-Davao Region said in a report.
Based on DOH-Davao’s Weekly Regional Covid-19 Situationer, the number of healthcare workers (HCWs) affected by Covid-19 in the region already reached the 1,000 mark as of November 18. Five HCWs succumbed to the disease.
According to the breakdown, nurses are the medical profession that topped the most number of affected with 269, and two of them have died. This brought the case fatality rate to 0.7 percent.
Nurses are followed by physicians with 133 cases, then nurse attendants with 89, medical technologists with 51, and other healthcare workers with 103 and one death.
A total of 186 non-medical staff also got infected, two of them succumbed to Covid-19, while 310 non-HCW/frontliners also got infected.
The data, however, did not provide a breakdown of active cases and those who already recovered.
The increase of affected HCWs also reflects the continuous increase of Covid-19 cases in the region.
As of November 18, the total Covid-19 cases in the region is 7,779 with 2,325 active cases, 5,168 recoveries, and 286 deaths.
Based on the recent DOH testing data, Davao Region’s positivity rate is at 5.9 percent.
According to medical doctors, the positivity rate must be pushed down to 5 percent and below, in order to control the Covid-19 situation.
DOH-Davao Regional Epidemiology Surveillance Unit Officer Cleofe Tabada said in a recent presser that some hospitals have claimed many of their medical staff are “overburdened” from responding to Covid-19 cases.
Tabada worried this might result in some patients not getting the “optimal care” because of the current problem in the region’s Covid-19 health care system.
In Davao City, which is still the Covid-19 hotspot in the region, medical doctors, through the Davao Medical Society, recently appealed to Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio to impose a two-week citywide lockdown to address the worsening health care situation brought about by the continuous uptrend of Covid-19 case, which also resulted in some HCWs getting sick.
National Task Force Covid-19 chief implementer Carlito Galvez, however, is not recommending the city to shift to enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) as this would be detrimental to the local economy. Instead, he recommended the city to shift to general community quarantine (GCQ).
Meanwhile, regional health officials during a Coordinated Operations to Defeat Epidemic (CODE) Team meeting on Wednesday afternoon, November 18, called for additional manpower in the health facilities.
Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) officer-in-charge Dr. Ricardo Audan openly voiced out to Galvez that the hospital is lacking manpower, and that only a few are applying for the open positions.
Galvez, in response to their plight, pledged to help the region improve its Covid-19 situation.
He said a team from the national government is ready to fly to Davao City to help manage the crisis by launching the Oplan Kalinga program, which seeks to reduce the risk of more infections in the household and communities and to identify and isolate infected individuals in proper isolation and quarantine facilities.
Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Año, meanwhile, recommended that the government should build a “mega” coronavirus disease quarantine facility in the city in order to contain the continuous spike of infection.
