Zamboanga City – The city government here has converted one of its isolation facilities into a mini-hospital to help address a shortage of beds in the local hospitals amid the surge in coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases.
Dr. Dulce Amor Miravite, city health officer, said Saturday converted into a mini-hospital is the Convention Center Isolation facility in Barangay Pasonanca, which has a 150-bed capacity.
Miravite said the mini-hospital can even accommodate Covid-19 patients with moderate conditions aside from those with mild symptoms.
She said another measure adopted is the transfer of patients with mild symptoms to isolation facilities to decongest the local hospitals.
“These are the thing that we have done to address the shortage of beds,” she added.
The hiring of additional personnel is also carried out as the city government is set to open more isolation facilities.
The Covid-19 data tracker showed that this city has registered 165 new cases of Covid-19, increasing the active cases to 2,413 as of Friday.
The recovered cases have also increased to 14,031 as 98 new recoveries were recorded.
Meanwhile, the government-run Zamboanga City Medical Center (ZCMC) announced that they added another ward for Covid-19 patients with 20 beds, but admissions increased to 231 patients, still exceeding the total 220-bed capacity as of Friday.
The ZCMC said eight of the patients were in critical condition and 70 with severe symptoms.
The ZCMC also disclosed that 82 percent of the admitted patients are unvaccinated.(Teofilo Garcia, Jr. via Philippine News Agency, file photo of Zambo City Health Office)