Bed capacity for COVID-19 severe, critical cases in “danger zone,” says Vega

July 13, 2020

The bed capacity for severe and critical cases of coronavirus in the Philippines is already in the "danger zone," Health Undersecretary Leopoldo Vega said on Monday.

The Department of Health official, in a virtual press briefing, said that the DOH is trying to increase the number of ICU beds of public hospitals and is also asking private institutions to implement the 30 percent allocation for beds for COVID-19 patients.

"The capacity right now, the critical bed capacity especially for the ICUs according to our data is in (the) danger zone and more than - that was about 70 percent," he said.

"We have to make sure that if ever there is a rise in the number of severe and critical patients, the hospitals need to adjust in terms of providing critical care and expanding their intensive care units...this is what we are trying to do. We are trying to prepare public hospitals, especially the government retained hospitals that they have to adjust in the number of their ICU beds because we have to be ready for this because we're in a crisis," Vega explained.

He said the government has to ensure that all severe and critical patients should have full access to hospitals so they could be given better clinical management.

National Task Force Against COVID-19 Chief Implementer Carlito Galvez Jr., in the same press briefing, acknowledged that the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has been increasing as well as those severe and critical cases.

As of July 12, NTF COVID-19 Deputy Chief Implementer Vicencio Dizon said that there were 85 laboratories for coronavirus nationwide.

In the coming days, he said the tests could surpass one million ahead of the end-July target.

To date, 978,651 COVID-19 tests have been conducted.

Dizon said the government is now "very close" to its target of 30,000 tests daily.

He said the goal of the government is to test 10 million individuals by next year.

As of July 13, COVID-19 cases in the Philippines reached to 57,006, with 35,036 active cases, 20,371 recoveries, and 1,599 deaths.

Of the 35,036 active cases, 92.2 percent were considered mild, 7.1 percent asymptomatic, 0.4 percent severe and 0.3 percent critical, according to DOH report. Celerina Monte/DMS