Daily COVID tally nears 10K; more ‘pop-up’ hospitals set. Inquirer Newsletter. March 27, 2021.

No images? Click here   LOCAL COVID COUNT   A sign showing a village tally of COVID-19 cases, recoveries and fatalities reminds residents of Barangay No. 775 in San Andres District, Manila, of the ever-present threat in their neighborhood. —MARIANNE BERMUDEZ     News Skyway 3 toll-free days may soon end The Toll Regulatory Board (TRB) has approved the provisional rates for the 18-kilometer Skyway Stage 3 expressway in Metro Manila, weeks after a public dispute with builder and operator San Miguel Corp. (SMC). The TRB said it approved a toll of P264 for the entire Skyway 3 running from Buendia in Makati to Balintawak in Quezon City. It is lower than SMC’s original proposed rate of P274. —STORY BY MIGUEL R. CAMUS Read more: newsinfo.inquirer.net   News Who will get 2nd batch of CoronaVac? Malacañang on Friday said most of the newly donated 400,000 doses of the CoronaVac vaccine, a second batch that arrived on March 24, would be used on health workers in Metro Manila and six other areas with a high concentration of COVID-19 cases traced to the new variants of the coronavirus. Amid complaints of line-jumping, the Palace reiterated the priority list of sectors for inoculation. —STORY BY LEILA B. SALAVERRIA AND DJ YAP Read more: newsinfo.inquirer.net   Newsletter / Join us Has this been forwarded by a friend? Subscribe now to the Philippine Daily Inquirer Newsletter and get your latest news and important updates on COVID-19. Subscribe     Learn more   Banner Story Daily COVID tally nears 10K; more ‘pop-up’ hospitals set By Patricia Denise M. Chiu As the country’s daily tally of new COVID-19 infections breached the 9,000 mark for the first time, the government on Friday said two more makeshift hospitals should be ready  by next month to accommodate the surge in cases and ease the load of major hospitals in Metro Manila, some of which have already reached full capacity. Health Undersecretary Leopoldo Vega said two modular hospitals located in Quezon City and Batangas—so-called for their prefabricated structures, mostly repurposed freight containers—would start operations in April. The one in Quezon City will have a 110-bed capacity and has been under construction near Quezon Institute (QI) since November last year. It should be fully operational by April 8, said Vega, the “treatment czar” of the Interim National Immunization Technical Advisory Group. “It will be managed by Jose [R.] Reyes Memorial Medical Center and will treat moderate and severe cases,” he said at an online briefing. The second modular hospital is a 44-bed facility in front of Batangas Medical Center (BMC) and should be open by the second week of April. The QI and BMC modular hospitals were the latest “pop-up hospitals” put up by the Department of Health (DOH) together with the Department of Public Works and Highways. Among those already in operation are the 250-bed COVID-19 ward erected near East Avenue Medical Center last year, and another at Dr. Jose N. Rodriguez Memorial (Tala) Hospital in Caloocan City. Risk classifications Vega said the department planned to put up another hospital, one that can offer up to 380 beds, as the medical community scrambles to find more space for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. “We need to expand our capacity,” he said. “We have current proposals including increasing the capacity of modular hospitals and building more, for example at Lung Center of the Philippines, since they have a big space there.” Vega said the utilization of COVID-19 wards and isolation beds in Metro Manila had reached moderate to high risk levels. According to DOH classifications, moderate risk refers to hospital utilization of between 60 to 70 percent, while high risk refers to a utilization rate of 70 to 85 percent. Hospitals that exceed 85-percent capacity are considered in a “critical” status. Vega noted that, among the cities in Metro Manila, Makati, Quezon City, Taguig and Manila have reported a high level of admission to their respective COVID-19 wards. ‘Ringing nonstop’ The DOH aims to decongest hospitals by transferring mild and moderate cases to isolation facilities and lower-level hospitals, to make space for severe and critical cases in level 3 hospitals. Level 3 hospitals are the most sophisticated institutions that have a high level of specialty intervention. Vega also said temporary treatment and monitoring facilities in Metro Manila were just nearly full, at 78-percent capacity. He said the government’s One Hospital Command Center hotline had been “overwhelmed with calls” and the staff’s mobile phones “ringing nonstop.” Nearly 10,000 He said the center did not have call forwarding technology, but that the staff  had been trying to improve service by adding more lines and connecting calls to the separate COVID-19 hotline of the DOH. The country on Friday logged a new record high in the daily COVID-19 tally, with 9,838 new cases. The number was around a  thousand cases more than Thursday’s reported 8,773 cases. On Saturday last week, the OCTA Research Group warned that the country may have 10,000 new cases daily by the end of the month. Friday’s numbers also pushed the national total case load past the 700,000 mark. Out of the 702,856 infections, there remained 109,018 active cases, of which the majority or 95.1 percent are mild, 3.0 percent are asymptomatic, 0.42 percent are moderate, 0.8 percent are severe and 0.7 percent are critical. The DOH said 663 patients have recovered, bringing the total number of survivors to 580,689. However, 54 patients died, raising the death toll to 13,149. Read more: newsinfo.inquirer.net   Editorial Our unhappy lot The 2021 World Happiness Report places the country at 61st among 149 countries, with a score of 5.88—nine places below its ranking in the previous survey. This year’s score is skewed in large part by the prevailing anxiety and concern created by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this context, Filipinos might well ask: What is there to be happy about? Or better yet: What is there that we should not be unhappy about? Increasingly, citizens do not even enjoy the basic privilege of living in a democracy: the right to express ourselves and talk about what is making us unhappy—or indignant, angry, frustrated, or flustered. The fourth quarter 2020 survey of Social Weather Stations found that 65 percent of adult Filipinos agreed that 'it is dangerous to print or broadcast anything critical of the administration, even if it is the truth.' No upright, conscientious government would ever consider that kind of public sentiment as a point of pride—that its people now see it as an object of dread and mistrust. Read full story: opinion.inquirer.net   Learn more   Copyright © 2020 PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: P.O. Box 2353, Makati Central Post Office, 1263 Makati City, Philippines.   Share    Tweet    Share    Forward  Preferences  |  Unsubscribe