NO more space left in the inns, so might as well go home.
During the virtual Kapihan, health officers suggested that households come out with “isolation rooms” because of the rising cases of COVID-19.
For the past nine days, the daily cases in Baguio never went below 200. Recoveries only went above 100 in six days from September 1.
This indeed means we have more cases than we can treat.
Hospitals have now reached breaking point. In Benguet, the Red Cross has built a tent city on the grounds of Benguet General Hospital. Luis Hora Memorial Hospital also said that they are fully occupied – and to think that Mountain Province has the lowest number of cases in the region.
If you open the BGHMC FB page, you would know that there are already no more rooms for patients. The ER has to be especially choosy as they can no longer accept unscheduled cases. Many of their frontliners are also under quarantine.
This notice has been posted since September 5, when things were still not that bad. It’s still there, pinned on their wall.
Because we officially only have 13 Delta cases, it is still inconclusive to say that Delta is the dominant strain in the city.
But this is because the Philippine Genome Center needs to make their findings after two weeks.
All the signals point to Delta being in our midst.
During the heydays of Alpha and Beta variants, the usual norm was that there was one case per household. The worst was with a family of schoolteachers and the barracks of police trainees. But those were the exceptions.
Now it’s whole families that are affected. This turns out to be the norm for Delta-infected households. The variant is three to six times more infectious than the classic one and even the first variants.
And yet the only solution according to health experts is home isolation.
Prepare an isolation room in your house.
So how do you do it, there should be a separate room and a CR.
Even the city administrator agrees to it. In the same Kapihan, he said families should prepare their own isolation rooms.
“Even at the start, that’s what I did,” Engr. Bonifacio dela Pena.
But as one commenter said, easy for one to say when you have your own elevator.
Yap, not everyone can be like Boni.
How many of us have two CRs in our households? How many have an idle room to be used as an isolation room? How many have houses even?
If we go to a normal house in Baguio, home isolation is dangerous. Pretty soon, all the other family members would be affected.
One of the health officers who recommended home isolation said this is much cheaper.
She said that the payment paid to the city by the health insurance corporation amounts to P22,400 per patient for every 14-day isolation that is completed.
This is only sufficient to recover a portion of the city government’s investment in setting up the isolation centers; thus, there is no basis for some individuals to conclude that compelling COVID-19 patients to undergo the required isolation based on protocols that have been promulgated by the health department is for the health and safety of everyone and not for any other reason.
Baguio manages and operates the Baguio City Community Isolation Unit based at the former Sto. Nin֮o hospital and a number of isolation centers at the Baguio Teachers Camp, the city’s central triage at the Baguio Convention Center, the Laurel dormitory, and the Ferioni apartment.
Apparently, this is no longer enough. The city has to get more isolation rooms.
Only families who can afford an isolation room should do it. And the city health office should inspect these rooms before allowing patients to use them. Maybe families with two or more patients can stay in that room.
But to compel all families to have an isolation room is not feasible and is unfair.
Stop tourism for a while and let owners of inns and hotels have their rooms and facilities used for this. We can’t all be good Samaritans but at least let us give discounts.
Despite this isolation call of the times, we find no man is an island.
