AS CASES continue to rise in Davao City, an official from the Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) has sought the help of 19th City Council for more staffing to help them in catering to Covid-19 patients.
SPMC Chief Dr. Ricardo Audan said during the online session of the City Council on Tuesday, June 8, that the hospital's bed occupancy has been under critical levels for the past weeks.
He said SPMC had been struggling for additional staffing in response to the ongoing surge.
"We can expand our rooms and beds, but we have a problem with regards to staffing," Audan said during the City Council regular session.
He said they already requested the Davao City Government and Department of Health (DOH) to redeploy nurses from the Philippine National Police (PNP)-Davao and Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP)-Davao to accommodate and assist SPMC health workers.
He also reached out to other auxiliary units, requesting them if they could spare their uniform personnel to be temporarily deployed at SPMC.
Audan said the augmented personnel were pulled out in April due to the low admission of Covid-19 critical and severe patients in the hospital.
In a previous interview, the hospital chief said they have been continuously opening their job positions for nurses, doctors, and other medical staff. However, they only get a few applicants.
This had prompted Audan to personally appeal to the Council for assistance to augment nursing and medical personnel while the city is still under a surge.
Before the session was adjourned, Councilor Mary Joselle Villafuerte passed a resolution under suspended rules, requesting PNP and BFP in Davao to provide nursing and medical staff to augment the staffing needs of SPMC and private hospitals in the city to respond to the Covid-19 surge.
"Davao City is currently experiencing a surge in Covid-19 cases, resulting in a lack of nursing and medical personnel at the SPMC and private hospitals," Villafuerte said in her speech.
As of June 6, SPMC's 87 intensive care unit (ICU) beds for Covid-19 patients have been fully occupied, while 314 out of the 321 ward beds are 97.
Some private hospitals in the city have started to accept Covid-19 patients to decongest SPMC.
City Health Office (CHO) Acting Head Dr. Ashley Lopez also said that some severe and critical Covid-19 patients who can no longer be accommodated at SPMC might be transferred to other Covid-19 referral hospitals outside Davao City.
Last week, the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) granted Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio's request to place the entire Davao under modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) following the increase of cases.
The MECQ status, effective June 5 to 20, was requested "to allow a circuit breaker in the surge of patients inside hospitals."
Duterte-Carpio recently said in a radio interview that the city has only two weeks to "flatten the curve," in response to the question as to why the IATF did not approve the city's initial request to place the city under MECQ until June 30.
"Wala naghatag og reason ang IATF ngano hangtod June 20 lang. But kung ako patagnaon kung ngano (The IATF did not specify their reason why they only approved the MECQ until June 20. But if I were to guess), it's [because] they wanted us to flatten the curve in two weeks only," the mayor said in an interview on 87.5 FM Davao City Disaster Radio.