DoH to update tagging of recovered Covid patients

The Department of Health (DoH) will conduct again on Sunday the time-based tagging of recoveries to reconcile the number of recovered patients with the protocol of the new Oplan Recovery program.
Oplan Recovery is DoH’s initiative to monitor the statuses of confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases, specifically deaths and recoveries.

The program ramps up the collection, validation and reconciliation of information between the DoH central and regional offices and local government units.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said mild and asymptomatic patients, whose status was not updated by the disease reporting units or DRUs from the time their diagnosis or tests were received, will be considered as recovered after 14 days.

“We had the clinical criteria plus the completion of 14 days isolation from the onset of illness or the time of the patient swabbing all of the mild and asymptomatic patients, as long as beyond 14 days and we did not see any outcome, we will tag them as recovered,” Vergeire told a media forum on Friday.

She said only mild and asymptomatic patients would be included in the Oplan Recovery program, as severe and critical cases have a median of 21 days of becoming active.
Mild and asymptomatic cases have a median of 14 days of becoming an active case.

She said DoH regional offices would verify first the active cases that would be counted based on the time-based recovery protocol to find out if they were still listed as active, and have not died or are still confined in a hospital and tagged as either severe or critical.

The department will conduct time-based tagging of active cases every Sunday to not bulk up the total number of active cases.

On Friday, 6,216 new cases were reported in the country, bringing the total of active cases to 79,813 and the overall cumulative cases to 153,660.

A little over 1,000 people were added to the recovered column, for a total of 71,405 recoveries, while 16 deaths raised the toll to 2,442.

Vergeire said the DoH would continue to support frontline medical workers and fight for their benefits.

The daughter of a nurse had posted on social media that her mother’s hazard pay was only received after she died.

Joie Cruz wrote on Facebook that her mother, who was promised a hazard pay of P500, only got P150 a day. After deductions, the nurse only received P7,000, or an equivalent of P64 per day.

The nurse had worked for 60 days.

Cainta Mayor Keith Nieto dismissed Cruz’s claims, saying that the daily hazard pay at the Cainta Hospital, where her mother worked, is P300 and that she had worked for only 33 days.

Vergeire said Health Secretary Francisco Duque 3rd has talked to Joie Cruz and vowed to continue to extend help to the bereaved family.

She added that the DoH has been constantly working with Congress to include additional benefits to healthcare workers under the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act or Bayanihan 2, which includes special risk allowances for private and public health workers.

Vergeire said local government units have been reminded by the DoH to provide the necessary benefits for all health care workers.

She also warned hospitals face sanctions if they reject patients with severe Covid-19 symptoms.

Source: TheManila Times