Senator Christopher “Bong” Go on Wednesday reiterated his appeal to concerned agencies to speed up the expansion and construction of additional modular hospitals with novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) isolation facilities and intensive care unit (ICU) beds in order to address the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the country.
“I laud the continuing efforts of the government to provide more isolation facilities for people with mild and moderate COVID-19 cases; however, the need for more facilities that can handle severe and critical conditions must also be considered,” Go, chairman of the Senate health committee, said in a statement April 14.
During President Duterte’s public address on Monday, April 12, National Task Force Against COVID-19 chief implementer and vaccine czar Carlito Galvez, Jr. disclosed that the country is in need of 2,000 additional ICU beds to respond to the outbreak. Metro Manila hospitals altogether have 1,395 ICU beds at present.
The government has initiated several expansion projects with the aim of generating an additional 1,045 ICU beds for critical cases and 1,178 beds for moderate and severe cases.
To further boost the healthcare system’s capacity, Go urged the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation to expedite its payments and settle its obligations to hospitals to ensure the unhampered provision of medical services. Both private and public hospitals in the NCR Plus area have committed to use the funds to purchase more new ICU beds.
DOH Secretary Francisco Duque III said private hospitals and local government unit (LGU) hospitals can use reimbursements from the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) for additional ICU beds.
PhilHealth is scheduled to pay 60 percent of their outstanding claims starting March, 2020 to April, 2021, Duque said.