The Benguet General Hospital lacks supplies of medicines and personal protective equipment (PPE) for its Covid-19 ward.
“We are lacking supplies of medicines intended for Covid-19 patients and we’re having shortages of PPEs as well as oxygen because our suppliers ran out of these supplies,” said BeGH Chief Meliarazon Dulay.
Dulay said the 150-bed hospital reached its full capacity, including the 81 beds allocated for Covid-19 patients.
BeGH consumes around 60 to 70 tanks of oxygen a day and has allotted almost P1 million for the purchase of oxygen alone.
Most of the patients admitted at the hospital are severe and critical cases and many are lined up everyday, as other hospitals are also full.
“For the past two weeks, we have been admitting seven patients per day. They stay for 10 to 14 days and if needed, they have to stay at the hospital for 21 days. In the past two weeks, we had 13 deaths, or an average of one death per day,” Dulay said.
She added health workers are exhausted due to the overwhelming number of Covid-19 patients including caring for non-Covid patients.
The Provincial Health Office reported the province’s positivity rate is at 10 percent while the acceptable positivity rate is at five percent, according to the World Health Organization.
Also, the province has an average daily attack rate of 9.84 based on the two-week growth from the last week of April to first week of May from the data of the Department of Health.
Dr. Jocelyn Legaspi of the PHO said those who are admitted in the hospitals for Covid-19 cases are already in critical or severe stage.
“We encourage everyone to seek early consultation and not when the symptoms are already severe,” Legaspi said. – Ofelia C. Empian
