A lot more health workers are currently infected with coronavirus disease (COVID-19) compared to the previous surge, the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) director said Wednesday, Jan. 12.
In an interview with ANC Philippines, Dr. Gerardo "Gap" Legaspi said there are now 973 medical frontliners in PGH who contracted COVID-19.
"Comparing it with the surge in September where we had 308 infected healthcare workers... but now we have 973 workers infected. So the limitation now is the ability to man the areas despite the lower severity of actual COVID, the problem is really manning these areas," Legaspi said.
"It came to a point that one nurse had to take of 18 patients, one nurse had to do 16 hours shift so that was the early problem that we encountered at the start of this surge early January," he noted.
The PGH chief, however, said that the shortened quarantine protocol for health workers helped address the manpower shortage.
"The new that was given out by the Department of Health and allowed us to call in our doctors and our nurses. The day after we did that, 93 doctors were able to come back and around 35 nurses were able to report back," Legaspi bared.
The IATF earlier approved a shortened isolation and quarantine period for fully vaccinated health workers infected with COVID-19 but are asymptomatic, as well as those exposed to COVID-19, to five days instead of seven days.