Gov’t to expand hospital beds, convert East Avenue to COVID-19 facility

August 6, 2020

The government is seeking to increase bed capacity of hospitals catering COVID-19 patients while Metro Manila and four nearby provinces are under modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ), the chief implementer of National Task Force Against COVID-19 said on Thursday.

In a press briefing, Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr said the government is planning to convert the East Avenue Medical Center into a COVID-dedicated hospital.

“With our engagement with different health professionals and organizations, we agreed that we will calibrate our plan and make use of 15 days in order to prepare us from this COVID pandemic crisis,” he said.

“Right now, (Department of Public Works) Secretary (Mark) Villar together with Secretary Vince Dizon and (Health Undersecretary Leopoldo) Vega are now fixing and will convert the East Avenue to become a COVID dedicated hospital,” he said.

Galvez said 250 isolation ward beds and around 20 to 30 intensive care unit (ICU) beds will be added to EAMC.

“Also in Quirino Memorial Hospital but it could only provide 50 ICU beds and 100 isolation ward bed… we are also expanding the PGH (Philippine General Hospital)… it could now accommodate 50 to 100 additional beds, same also with Lung Center (of the Philippines),” he said.

Galvez and other members of the Interagency Task Force opened the government’s One Hospital Command Center in Makati which will monitor the hospital capacity in the country.

“Through the One Health Command, we are capacitating the health capacity. We are adding more ICU beds to address the increasing admission of hospitals on severe and critical patients,” he said.

Galvez added they will go to areas with critical situations to train local government units and health professionals on how they will implement localized lockdowns.

“We gave the LGUs briefing… we saw that LGUs and local health officers had an important role in our COVID-19 response,” he said.

Galvez said based on the data they acquired in hospitals, the contamination right now is not only by individual but by families.

“Most vulnerable (are) critical areas… those densely populated area… they cannot observe social distancing because their house is small,” Galvez said.

He added that there is also lack of orientation for workers in terms of public safety and minimum health standards.

“We saw the vulnerability in workplace and informal communities that they are now observing minimum health standard… that’s why 80 percent of our effort is more on prevention,” Galvez said.

“As we expected, fifteen days is not enough to address or contain new cases but we will continue to work hard so that all our strategies will lessen the new case and at the same time, minimize the death (rate),” Galvez said.

For his part, Dizon said they will intensify their testing and tracing in the communities.

“Everyday we will go to different LGUs to intensify tracing and isolation of people who are tested positive on COVID-19. This is our way to decrease the number of cases,” he said.

Galvez said they will finish visiting LGUs in Metro Manila this week.

He added that the Department of Health is conducting massive recruitment so there will be a reserve force for health workers.

“We rest assured the government will always proceed and continue to care for our health workers,” he said.

Based on the Department of Health's Thursday case bulletin, the total number of COVID-19 cases in the country is at 119,460.  Ella Dionisio/DMS