MANILA, Philippines – The Philippine General Hospital (PGH), the country’s main hospital for COVID-19, saw six times more admissions in just 10 days as COVID-19 cases continue to climb, its spokesperson said on Wednesday, January 5.

In an interview with ANC’s Dateline Philippines, PGH spokesperson Dr. Jonas del Rosario said that on December 25, the hospital only had 30 admitted COVID-19 patients, but on Wednesday, hospital admissions due to COVID-19 had jumped to 203.

“So if you do the math, that’s at least six times increase from the 10-day course,” he said.

Del Rosario also said that a lot of PGH’s health workers are getting sick, noting that not all of them are assigned to COVID-19 wards.

“A lot of them are just coming in from the holidays. And they probably got it also from their own communities, and that’s part of probably the social gatherings that they attended,” he said.

The spike in cases comes as the Philippines recorded a total of 14 cases of the Omicron variant, with three of these as local cases. Experts have said that Omicron is the most transmissible coronavirus variant, so far.

On Wednesday, the Philippines logged 10,775 new cases, nearly double yesterday’s tally.

On Tuesday, January 4, the World Health Organization said that more evidence has emerged that the Omicron variant is affecting the upper respiratory tract, causing milder symptoms than previous variants.

Aside from PGH, other hospitals also reported a spike in admissions in the past days. Most of the patients have mild symptoms, which local health officials also attributed to wider vaccine coverage.

The health department said that COVID-19 cases could spike by end of January and might surpass the Delta-driven surge last September 11 of 26,303 cases.

Del Rosario said that PGH is again slowly reopening its COVID-19 wards amid the spike in cases. He said though that the reopening of wards also entails additional manpower.

“It’s a challenge if your healthcare workers are getting sick also,” he said.

Nearly two years into the pandemic, the Philippines is still struggling to contain the virus that has so far infected over 2.8 million and has killed over 51,000 of its population. – Rappler.com