A group of health workers on Thursday, Sept. 30, asked to extend the Alert Level 4 over Metro Manila, citing high hospital capacity shortage of manpower.
In an interview with CNN Philippines, the Alliance of Health Workers (AHW) President Robert Mendoza hopes the Department of Health (DOH) would consider first the situation of health workers before Metro Manila relaxes restrictions.
Mendoza said many health workers already resigned, retired, and left abroad due to the lack of benefits or were afraid to infect their families.
"Sana naman tingnan muna natin ang kalagayan ng ating health workers bago tayo magbaba sa Alert Level 3 kasi sa ngayon tumitriple ang trabaho ng ating health workers na mga naiwan sa ospital dahil nagkaroon ng surge (Hopefully they would first consider the condition of our health workers before we go down to Alert Level 3 because now the work of our health workers who were left in the hospital has tripled because of the surge)," he added,
Mendoza also noted that currently, one nurse is already attending to 10 to 15 patients due to manpower shortage.
"Sana manatili sa Alert Level 4 at tingnan natin ang hospital occupancy, yung ating intensive care unit occupancy, wards occupancy. Sana bumaba na muna at humupa talaga itong pasyente na nasa ospital (I hope Metro Manila stays at Alert Level 4, let's look at the hospital occupancy, our ICU, our COVID-19 wards first. We need to see a downtrend in hospitalizations or cases to go down first)," he added.
Metro Manila was placed under general community quarantine with Alert Level 4 from Sept. 16 to 30.
The DOH is expected to recommend an alert level for October on Thursday based on the region's COVID-19 risk classification and hospital utilization rate.