ILOILO – After 10 days of stringent lockdown, the Rep. Pedro Trono Memorial District Hospital (RPTMDH) in Guimbal, Iloilo partially reopened over the weekend.
On Saturday, some of the hospital wards and departments resumed operations, including the emergency room, triage area, out-patient department and animal bite treatment center.
However, the admission department and the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and non-COVID wards remained closed, said Dr. Cynthia Cabangal-Ng, chief of the provincial government’s Hospital Management Office.
According to Ng, the number of hospital workers who contracted the viral illness already reached 40 with 12 new infections recorded at the close of 2020.
Of the 40 COVID-19 cases, two were doctors, 25 were nurses, four were nursing attendants, another four were institution workers, and two were clerks of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp.
“Kalabanan sa ila asymptomatic kag manogtapos na sang isolation period,” said Ng.
She disclosed that there were only 27 out of 276 RPTMDH personnel who have yet to be tested for possible coronavirus infection.
A fact-finding committee was formed to determine the source of the COVID-19 outbreak in the hospital, said Ng.
She earlier suspected that protocols may have been breached as she urged healthcare workers to constantly revisit safety policies.
Ng described healthcare workers, especially those assigned as medical frontliners, as “high risk” for COVID-19 infection because they directly deal with patients.
COVID-19 spreads from person to person through small droplets from the nose or mouth which are spread when a person with COVID-19 coughs or exhales.
These droplets also land on objects and surfaces around the person. Other people then catch COVID-19 by touching these objects or surfaces, then touching their eyes, nose or mouth.
To ensure the safety patients and hospital staff, Ng required all employees of the 12 capitol-run hospitals to present a negative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction test result before they could return to work./PN
