Nurse Myleonor Alcoriza of the state-run Zamboanga City Medical Center has seen the faces of many desperate COVID-19 patients who asked if the medical staff think they stand a chance of going home alive.

Alcoriza said it’s when doctors and nurses know that the hospital has run out of medical oxygen that the questions of the patients gasping for air remain unanswered.

“Those who need intubation ask us if they could still return to their families and see their children. They beg for help because they still want to live,” she said on Monday, October 11.

She said the situation was already adversely affecting public health frontliners in Zamboanga.

“Many of us are on sick leave. We, health workers, get exhausted, too,” Alcoriza added.

Medical groups in Zamboanga have called on the government to impose stricter quarantine measures as COVID-19 cases surged in what Mayor Maria Isabelle Climaco feared to be the third wave of infections in the city.

The local chapter of the Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines (PHAP) and the Zamboanga City Medical Center Employees called for stricter implementation of quarantine measures and compliance with public health rules.

Several hospitals in Zamboanga City stopped admitting patients in need of medical oxygen due to a supply shortage last week, said Dr. Marites Maxino, PHAP-Zamboanga president.

Mayor Climaco expressed alarm as the Zamboanga City Health Office logged single-day, three-digit numbers of newly-documented COVID-19 cases.

The City Health Office logged 190 newly-documented cases and 2,518 active cases on Sunday, October 10.

A day earlier, the city saw 227 newly-documented cases and 2,495 active cases, the highest in the Zamboanga Peninsula region.

Zamboanga City’s hospitals were overwhelmed, and this has been aggravated by the shortage of medical oxygen and other medical supplies, according to Climaco.

The situation worsened that Climaco had to facilitate the delivery of 12 tanks of medical oxygen from Cebu to the Ciudad Medical Zamboanga (CMZ) with the help of Cebu’s Coast Guard Central Station on Saturday, October 9.

Climaco also called on the Department of Health to send Zamboanga City more vaccines.

The ZCMC, the region’s top COVID-19 referral hospital, said it has already run out of space for patients. The hospital’s COVID-19 facility has a 222-bed capacity, but on Sunday, it said it counted 225 patients.

In a public notice on Sunday, ZCMC said its emergency room staff were also “extremely overwhelmed.” As of Sunday, there were 52 sick people there waiting for their swab test results, and for vacancies in the wards that only have a 25-bed capacity. 

ZCMC said data show that about 80% of the COVID-19 patients admitted to the hospital were unvaccinated. – Rappler.com

Frencie Carreon is a Mindanao-based journalist and an awardee of the Aries Rufo Journalism Fellowship