THE Department of Health (DOH) has ordered both public and private hospitals in Visayas and Mindanao to increase their Covid-19 beds by up to 50 percent as they experience a surge in the number of Covid-19 infections.
In an online media forum Health Undersecretary Abdullah Dumama and CESO III for the Field Implementation and Coordination Team (Visayas and Mindanao), also said that in Regions 6, 9, 11, 12, and 13, a total of 365 intensive care unit beds and 957 ward beds were added.
Likewise, Dumama said that the contact tracing and testing capacities were strengthened in Visayas and Mindanao due to the “fast increase” in the number of Covid-19 cases in Regions 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, Caraga, and Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Dumama also said that around 4,000 health-care workers were deployed to the hospitals in Visayas and Mindanao.
“Ipinag-utos na sa mga pampublikong ospital na bisitahin at pag aralan ulit ang kanilang [We already ordered public hospitals to revisit and study their] Covid-19 surge plans,” Dumama said.
Meanwhile, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said that clustering in workplaces has been identified as the reason in the increase in cases.
Other factors, she said, are the presence of variants and non-compliance with minimum public health standards.
Mindanao logged 13,425 active cases, while 9,725 new infections were recorded in the Visayas on June 8.
Covid cases
On Friday, the DOH logged 6,686 additional cases, bringing the total number of infections in the country to 1,300,349.
There were also 3,190 recoveries and 196 deaths.
Of the total number of cases, 4.7 percent (61,345) are active, 93.6 percent (1,216,497) have recovered, and 1.73 percent (22,507) have died.
Twenty-four duplicates were removed from the total case count. Of these, 20 are recoveries and 1 is a death.
Moreover, 127 cases previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation.
Also, 1,000 cases previously classifed as recoveries were retagged as active cases after validation.
All laboratories were operational on June 9, 2021 but three failed to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System.
Based on data in the last 14 days, the three non-reporting laboratories contribute, on average, 0.27 percent of samples tested and 0.38 percent of positive individuals.
Read full article on BusinessMirror