BACOLOD City – To prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) transmission among its healthcare workers, the Lying-in and Birthing Center of the City Health Office (CHO) is strictly enforcing the “no negative swab test result, no admission” rule.
Despite a memorandum issued last year requiring such, many are non-compliant, according to Dr. Edwin Miraflor Jr., officer-in-charge of the CHO.
“Let’s not put the health of our healthcare workers at risk,” said Miraflor. “We badly need unhampered health services so we have to follow the protocols.”
The Emergency Operations Center (EOC) here noted that more than half of patients at the health facility have not undergone reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests.
For her part, City Administrator Em Ang, also the executive director of the EOC, said this precautionary measure is imperative “because COVID-19 is still here.”
Close and skin-to-skin contact with patients during childbirth is inevitable for healthcare workers at the Lying-in Clinic, Ang pointed out, thus “it is necessary to know whether you test positive or negative [for COVID-19], so that clinic staff can take precautionary measures.”
She added: “Pre-admission testing will not only protect healthcare workers but also the mother and her newborn child.”
The Bacolod Respiratory Outpatient (BRO) Center across the city’s public plaza is offering free COVID-19 RT-PCR tests for pregnant women. It is open Mondays to Sundays.
As of yesterday, Bacolod registered 7,431 total coronavirus cases – 817 active, 6,407 recoveries and 207 deaths./PN