Bacolod CHO will no longer accept patients with COVID symptoms

By Dolly Yasa

 

BACOLOD City – The Bacolod City Health Office (CHO) will no longer accommodate patients showing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) symptoms starting Oct 26, 2020.

City Administrator Em Ang, executive director and deputy for administration and operations of the Bacolod City Emergency Operations Center-Task Force (EOC-TF said Wednesday that the move “is to protect other patients – especially pregnant women – from contracting the viral disease.

“In our daily reports, there are always pregnant women who are tested positive. We are making a study on that right now. In fact, we are planning to meet with the Philippine Obstetrics and Gynecologist Society (POGS) in the next few days. We’d like to find out what is causing that,” Ang said.

She added that pregnant women are among the patients who regularly seek consultation at the CHO’s lying-in clinic.

By enjoining the CHO from receiving patients “with influenza-like symptoms like cough, fever, or anybody who manifests symptoms related to COVID-19,” the EOC-TF is hoping to “minimize the transmission among pregnant women” in Bacolod, Ang added.

She said that patients with COVID-19 symptoms will instead be accommodated at the Bacolod Respiratory Out-Patient (BRO) Center.

“The BRO Center will be our catchment area,” Ang added.

Meanwhile, Inter-Agency Task Force-Visayas chief implementer Mel Feliciano said 20 percent of “probables,” or those patients with flu-like symptoms who subjected themselves to swabbing, have tested positive for COVID-19.

Feliciano, who was among the personnel deployed by the Office of the President to manage the spread of COVID-19 in Cebu City earlier this year, oversees the operation of the Bacolod EOC-TF.