At least three doctors die in Covid-19 fight in Philippines

At least three doctors have died in the fight against the coronavirus disease in the Philippines, where thousands of medical workers are treating Covid-19 patients despite the lack of protective gear, officials said Monday.

Several other doctors were reported to be in critical condition, while hundreds of health care workers were in quarantine after being exposed to the virus in various hospitals in Manila, according to hospitals and colleagues.

“Three of our doctors have died and a number of them [are] in critical condition due to the coronavirus,” presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said in a statement. “An increasing number of Filipinos are succumbing to the deadly disease.”

The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the Philippines stood at 396 as of Monday, with 33 deaths, Health Undersecretary Maira Rosario Vergeire said. It is not clear if the three doctors were included in the death toll.

The three doctors – a cardiologist, an anaesthesiologist and an oncologist – were infected with the virus while treating patients in three different hospitals in Manila, according to the Philippine Medical Association and the hospitals.

“Everyone’s tired but we have no choice, we chose this work,” said Antonio Ramos, a doctor and administrative service manager at the Lung Center of the Philippines. “We cannot even spare time to mourn our friends.”

Read also: Canada first out of Olympics as Japan admits Games not viable

Ramos called for donations for personal protective gear for all hospitals dealing with Covid-19, the disease caused by the new virus, noting that supply has run out in other facilities.

“We are seeing at the end of the month, we will have nothing,” he told Manila radio station DZMM. “We are improvising but that’s a breach in protocols and that’s why doctors are getting sick.”

In one hospital in Laguna province, south of Manila, doctors and nurses used garbage and plastic bags as protective gear to cover their heads, hands, feet and body. Others doctors have suggested using shower caps, ponchos and disposable plastic gloves as alternative protective gear.

“It’s very difficult for hospitals to buy PPEs (personal protective equipment), we are dependent on donors,” said Karl Henson, an infectious disease specialist and head of the infection control and epidemiology centre of The Medical City.

“If you can’t protect your health care workers, they can’t adequately take care of patients,” he said in an interview. 

Henson added that the government should work on getting more testing kits so more people can know whether they have been infected with Covid-19, the disease caused by the new virus.

“What we are doing now in the Philippines is sending home patients under investigations with mild symptoms, not testing them,” he said. “We are only testing moderate to severe cases.”

“We really should be testing anyone who’s symptomatic so that we can … make sure that if you are positive, we need to check your contacts, and if they are symptomatic, we can test and isolate them,” he added.

“It’s really the only way for us to break the transmission chain.” (dpa)