By Karen Lema
MANILA, March 27 (Reuters) - Private hospitals in the
Philippines capital Manila have stopped accepting coronavirus
patients in the face of surging numbers of sufferers and people
seeking tests, the hospitals said.
The Philippines has reported relatively fewer infections
than many other countries in Southeast Asia, but medical experts
say a lack of testing has meant that the scale of the epidemic
has gone undetected.
"It's like wartime," said Eugenio Ramos, a doctor and head
of The Medical City, a Manila private hospital, which was among
the first to turn away coronavirus patients.
It has attended to more than 1,000 people who feared they
had coronavirus and is currently treating more than 100
suspected coronavirus patients, 14 in intensive care.
"More and more are coming, a lot of scared people, some of
them already in their advanced stage," Ramos said this week -
adding that facilities were so stretched that many who should be
in the intensive care unit were just being intubated with
breathing tubes to keep them alive.
The scenes are akin to those in hospitals in countries that
have been overwhelmed by coronavirus cases, but comes less than
three weeks since the country of 107 million reported its first
case of local transmission.
The Philippines has reported 803 cases and 54 deaths.
Malaysia, with the highest number of infections in Southeast
Asia at 2,161, has had 26 deaths.
The situation in the Philippines is similar to that in
Indonesia, the region's most populous country, where there is an
even higher ratio of deaths to detected cases - an indicator for
doctors that the number of infections may be much higher.
Former Health Minister Esperanza Cabral said the reported
infection rate was probably just the tip of the iceberg, given
the Philippines has so far only tested 2,147 people.
"We cannot gauge the extent of the outbreak until we have
tested about 10,000 to 20,000 people," Cabral told Reuters.
Testing in the Philippines is to be ramped up with the
arrival of 100,000 test kits from China.
Modelling from the Future of Humanity Institute at the
University of Oxford suggests the number of infections in the
Philippines may already be higher than 11,000.
LOCKDOWN
The Philippines took drastic measures to contain the spread
after its first domestic case on March 7, becoming the third
country after China and Italy to put its people under home
quarantine, suspend transport, work and commercial activity.
But the health system is weak.
The Philippines, which on average sends 19,000 trained
nurses overseas each year, has 10 beds and 14 doctors per 10,000
people, according to data from the World Health Organization.
Italy has more than 40 doctors and 30 beds per 10,000 people.
An emergency ward worker who spoke to Reuters described
patients waiting up to six hours to be seen and inexperienced
staff treating critical patients due to manpower shortages.
Nine medical workers have died, and hundreds more have been
quarantined for being close to sufferers.
The University of Santo Tomas hospital has 530 staff
quarantined. The Chinese General Hospital and Medical Center
said it had insufficient testing kits and protective gear and
could not take more coronavirus patients.
Under pressure from 11 private hospitals, the government has
now dedicated three public hospitals to serve as special
COVID-19 treatment centres - but they themselves are also under
strain.
"We have every reason to be scared," the private hospitals
said in a letter appealing for help.
The head of the emergency department of St. Luke's Medical
Centre, Richard Enecilla, said it had received 120 possible
coronavirus-related patients in one day, and made them line up
on the hospital driveway to limit exposure.
"The way it exploded caught a lot us off-guard," he told
Reuters. "The volume of cases went up and our capacity to serve
went down at the same time."