Nino hospital eyed as Covid-19 facility; No shortage of goods in Baguio, contact tracing

CITY HALL BEAT

Aileen P. Refuerzo

BAGIUO CITY -- The city government has obtained the consent of the owners of Sto. Niño Hospital, a 36-bed capacity medical facility along P. Burgos St. which ceased operations in 2009 to serve as Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) treatment facility.

Mayor Benjie Magalong said he, Dr. Willy Occidental and City Administrator Bonifacio Dela Peña met with the hospital owners who benevolently agreed to the city’s use of the facility for free.

The city intends to use the facility as exclusive critical care unit for COVID-19 patients to segregate them from non-COVID patients and free the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center and other hospitals from contamination risks.

Dela Peña said barangay officials led by punong barangay Bonifacio Bustos expressed support to the plan and agreed to help the city gain the consent of the community for the noble intention.

Doctors and experts on infectious diseases have assured that the facility will be protected and contained to avoid danger to the community.

Preparations for the operationalization of the facility started today with the St. Louis University Hospital of the Sacred Heart headed by Medical Director Dr. Paul Adlai B. Quitiquit as the lead group.

They will visit the site to assess its capacity for intensive care unit, operating room, dialysis and deliveries and other needs in terms of equipment, manpower and supplies.

Facilities and manpower will again be pooled from the various hospitals, the Dept. of Health and the city government.

A massive clean-up of the building was also conducted by the city government with the Baguio City Police Office trainees and personnel from the City Building and Architecture Office, City Environment and Parks Management Office, City Tourism Operations Office and the City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office.

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The Department of Trade and Industry assured that there is no flour shortage in the city assuaging consumers' worries after one of the city's major bread suppliers suddenly halted operations.

DTI-CAR Regional Director Myrna Pablo told Mayor Benjamin Magalong that as per their investigation, the stoppage of operation of the La Trinidad-based bakeshop was not due to the unavailability of flour but because of the owner's desire to protect the employees from the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

                Pablo said one distributor of flour attested that they have the supply having just delivered to other establishments.

At the moment, the distributor has more than 3,500 sacks supposedly for the local bakeshop that stopped operations and his problem now is how to dispose them, Pablo said.

Pablo said DTI Undersecretary Ruth Castelo validated that there is no flour shortage as of now.

Magalong also assured that the city has enough inventory of basic goods and commodities as passage problems had been addressed.

"For a while, I was worried of possible shortage as our inventory was only good for two weeks when we began the quarantine but now that the flow of supplies is unhampered, the stocks are now being replenished," he said.

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Mayor Magalong ordered the strengthening of the city’s contact tracing system to help arrest the spread of cOVID-19.

The mayor authorized the conduct of contact tracing of presumptive cases ahead of confirmation from the Department of Health-Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (DOH-RITM).

“We have to expedite early contact tracing to prevent those persons from infecting others. We should not wait for the confirmatory tests which take days because by that time it will be too late,” the mayor said.

He said the City Health Services Office contact tracing teams led by City Epidemiology Surveillance Unit led by Dr. Donnabel Panes have been beefed up with the inclusion of investigators from the Baguio City Police Office to tap their expertise in aiding patients to recall their whereabouts and the people they were with.

The mayor also directed the city Management and Information Technology Division to develop a computer program as data base for patients and their contacts.

The mayor said the present contact tracing system is working well so far but there were gaps identified and are now being threshed out