DOH: Capacitate primary hospitals to depopulate COVID-19 beds

TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, June 5 (PIA) -- Health experts at the national level suggest capacitating local hospitals to be efficient enough to treat patients.

This as Bohol nears its target of reaching herd immunity against COVID-19 that has since killed 682 Boholanos.

The Department of Health (DOH) has emphasized the need to capacitate local health providers in primary health care facilities and infirmaries to depopulate tertiary and secondary hospital beds for other critical cases. 

Vaccinating 71.57% of its target 80% of eligible population of 1,106,084, Bohol still needs to vaccinate 103,267 individuals to achieve the herd immunity threshold.

An 80% vaccination coverage of its eligible population allows the national task force to downgrade Bohol’s COVID alert status to Alert Level 1.

According to DOH, only when COVID-19 is declared as endemic can the country fully open its economy and allow its people to step into the new normal.

By declaring COVID-19 from being a pandemic into an endemic, this means that COVID-19 may still around but it has become an insignificant threat in disrupting daily lives, according to the World Health Organization.

However, the Bohol Inter Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, through its Emergency Operations Center (EOC), reported on May 27 a critical risk in bed and specialized equipment utilization in its main and COVID-19 dedicated hospital.

At the Gov. Celestino Gallares Memorial Hospital, Bohol’s only tertiary hospital dedicated to COVID-19, the utilization of its COVID Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds is at 61% with eight of its 13 beds occupied.

In its COVID-19 ward beds, all the 14 beds have patients on them, reporting a critical risk.

The hospital’s COVID-19 isolation beds are also at critical risk with all 14 beds occupied, according to the EOC.

Of its COVID-19 mechanical ventilators, eight of its 18 units are available.

At Bohol’s primary hospitals, all the four COVID-19 ICU beds remain unoccupied, seven of its 61 COVID-19 ward beds are occupied, while 51 of the total 103 COVID-19 isolation beds are occupied.

Of the total five COVID-19 mechanical ventilators, only one is occupied, according to the EOC.

In its infirmaries, nine of the 16 total COVID-19 wards are available while 22 of 37 isolation beds are unoccupied.

These clinics do not have mechanical ventilators and COVID-19 ICU beds. (RAHC/PIA7 Bohol)