PGH records highest number of COVID-19 patients; needs more doctors —spox

The Philippine General Hospital (UP-PGH) has registered its highest number of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients to date and is in need of more doctors to treat them, its spokesman said Wednesday.

Interviewed on GMA News' Balitanghali, PGH spokesperson Dr. Jonas Del Rosario said their COVID-19 beds are 94% occupied while their intensive care units are full.

"Well, we registered the highest number of COVID-19 patients. We are now 241 patients out of the 255 beds. So far, that's roughly 94-percent occupancy," Del Rosario said, referring to the health care capacity at PGH, which is a COVID-19 referral hospital.

"Our ICU is full. There are many patients waiting in our ER (emergency room) to be admitted. Also a lot of patients are waiting from different hospitals to transfer to PGH," he added.

Del Rosario also bared that the hospital can still open more COVID-19 wards but it is in need of more doctors to treat patients.

"Madaling magbukas ng ward o kwarto, ang nagiging limitation ang tao. Kasi kailangan fully complemented with doctors and nurses so we are trying to make arrangements to get more doctors to take care of our patients," he said.

(We can easily open more wards or rooms but we have limited people.)

With the rise of coronavirus disease infections, the spokesman said they will slow down operations for non-COVID-19 cases.

"Internally, we have to slow down our non-COVID operations so ang nangyari hindi kami tumatanggap muna ng non-COVID patients sa PGH [we are not accepting non-COVID patients at the moment]. We need to realign and reassign our healthcare workers to man the COVID operations," he said.

He, likewise, supported health professionals' plea for another week of extension of the enhanced community quarantine over the NCR plus bubble, which is until April 4.

"I think another week [of ECQ] so we can see what happened to the numbers. If there is a consistent downward trend, then we can go to GCQ," the PGH official said.

The Philippines on Wednesday logged a total caseload of 747,288, including 130,245 active cases and 13,297 fatalities.

UP-PGH also previously said it could no longer readily accept severe cases of the respiratory ailment.  — Consuelo Marquez/BM, GMA News