Manila: The Philippine government on Monday extended a lockout by another week after a disturbing increase coronavirus infections continued to increase and many hospitals in the capital and remote regions began to overwhelm.
President Rodrigo Duterte locked Metropolitan Manila and four remote provinces, a region of more than 25 million people, last week as daily infections transgressed 10,000.
Roman Catholic leaders have moved Holy Week and Easter events online after all public gatherings, including in places of worship, were temporarily banned.
The government-run Lung Center of the Philippines over the weekend became the youngest hospital in the main region to announce that it can no longer accept boarding patients COVID-19 division reached full capacity and its emergency room handled its capacity twice.
“We are not just satiated. We are very satiated. In fact, the hospital has been full for the past two weeks, ”said Dr Norberto Francisco, spokesman for the Lung Center.
Other hospitals said they could increase bed capacity, but that there were not enough medical workers, in part because many were infected.
Duterte’s government has come under increasing criticism for its mismanagement of the pandemic, but presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the spread of more contagious coronavirus variants came as a surprise.
“No one would probably have been able to foresee how contagious these new variants are and as a result we have the balloon numbers,” Roque told ABS CBN News and officials will inaugurate a 110-bed intensive care unit at a hospital in the capital. region Monday and was planning to launch cell phones COVID-19 intensive care centers.
The Philippines reported more than 795,000 COVID-19 cases with 13,425 deaths, the highest total in Southeast Asia after Indonesia.
Source: Telangana Today