Senate minority leader Franklin Drilon on Wednesday reiterated his call for the Duterte government to lay out a comprehensive plan to fight the COVID-19 pandemic following the Department of Health’s (DOH) admission that hospitals, particularly in Metro Manila, are about to reach the “danger zone.”
(Senate of the Philippines / FILE PHOTO / MANILA BULLETIN)
“It’s a cause for alarm. Hospital beds are running out. Patients were dying while waiting for hospital beds. Patients are already spreading the virus while waiting for their test results,” Drilon said.
“These are the issues that millions of Filipinos, myself included, wanted to hear from the President’s 5th State of the Nation Address (SONA),” he stressed.
The DOH had earlier stated that 82.2 percent of their total COVID-19 bed capacity are already occupied due to the influx of patients infected by the virus, and warned that the health care system is close to being overwhelmed.
Hospitals in other regions such as Calabarzon and Central Luzon are also nearing the “warning zone” with almost 50 percent of their bed capacity already occupied.
“We need a concrete plan. Otherwise, we will not be able to move forward in this fight against COVID-19 pandemic,” Drilon said.
“While the rest of the world are already on the road to recovery, the Philippines would always be back to square one without a comprehensive plan,” he said.
He said “time is ticking” for the DOH as he urged the agency to move as quickly as possible to prevent overwhelming the country’s health care system.
“This is because, if hospitals are overwhelmed, it could cause serious problems and even devastating consequences for the country. We must do everything to prevent the collapse of our health care system,” he said.
Drilon said that until now, the government’s testing and contact tracing efforts are “too slow.”
“Usad pagong po tayo sa testing and contact tracing. These are two of the three Ts where we are really lagging behind. I don’t know where the bottleneck is but we really are too slow,” he said.