ILOILO City – Can this city still manage its rising cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)? Or should it seek the help of the National Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) like what Cebu City did last year to ramp up public health interventions?
According to Mayor Jerry Treñas, he would discuss this possibility in a meeting today with officials of local hospitals, Department of Health (DOH) Region 6, Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), and the Iloilo City COVID Team.
The city mayor is also looking at the possibility of escalating the city’s quarantine level to the highest classification – the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ).
The city is currently under a modified ECQ.
Iloilo City’s active COVID-19 cases as of June 10 were at 2,296. Since the start of the month, not less than 100 cases were being recorded daily.
The city’s COVID-19 death toll is now at 223 but cases that recovered also rose to 6,427.
Treñas said he asked support from Health secretary Francisco Duque III, particularly for consumables like reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing kits and personal protective equipment for the Iloilo City Uswag Molecular Laboratory.
The city mayor also appealed for additional medical personnel to augment the number of frontliners in the health and quarantine facilities, and for additional COVID-19 vaccines, among others.
As a response, the Department of Health (DOH) hired 38 nurses. Government offices like the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) 6, Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) 6, Police Regional Office (PRO) 6, and Philippine Army’s 3rd Infantry Division (3ID) also deployed their respective uniformed personnel to city hospitals.
Since last week, COVID-19 Focal Person Dr. Roland Jay Fortuna said the deployment so far included 10 nurses of BFP-6 at the Metro Iloilo Hospital and Medical Center (Jaro); six nurses of PCG-6 at The Medical City Iloilo (Molo); and eight aides of the 3ID at Western Visayas Medical Center (Mandurriao).
The city mayor also thanked the national government agencies for the response.
Fortuna said the augmentation of staff will stay as long as the hospitals need them to manage COVID patients.
The city government also provided board and lodging to uniformed personnel.
To further boost health personnel, the city government also hired 23 additional nurses with one on duty, while 22 are waiting for their swab test results before they could start.
Eighty-four nursing aides were also hired – 14 on duty and 70 on standby pending their swab results.
As to the vaccines, Treñas said he is in constant communication with IATF chief implementer and vaccine czar secretary Carlito Galvez and testing czar secretary Vince Dizon.
“(They) promised to reallocate more vaccines to cities facing a surge of cases like the city. I appeal to everyone to be vaccinated if you have a chance. We also continue to hire medical personnel to be deployed to the hospitals for a period of not less than two months. We need to help our healthcare system so that it will not be overwhelmed,” Treñas added./PN
