Ayala Healthcare Holdings Inc. (AC Health) said it has spent some P300 million in investments and donations to fight coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), as the company braces for the second or third wave of infections after the lockdown is lifted.
Paolo Borromeo, AC Health president and CEO, said on Wednesday that the company is constructing biosafety laboratories with its partner Tropical Disease Foundation (TDF). This is meant to increase the Ayala-led Covid-19 tests to 3,000 per day.
These laboratories will be situated in the TDF in Makati and Qualimed Hospitals in Sta. Rosa, Laguna, Tanauan, Batangas, San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan and Iloilo City. The said facilities will be operational by mid-June.
In total, the country has the capacity to do about 11,000 Covid-19 tests per day, but it needed to push the capacity to 30,000 tests a day by the end of May and up to 50,000 tests by June.
Borromeo said they are preparing for the second wave of possible Covid-19 infections, which it expects when the lockdown is eased in some areas.
“As we track the trend starting from week one…the lockdown has been fairly effective because the cases both in Familydoc and Healthway as well as [what] we’re seeing in the hospitals… its not in the level of overwhelming demand of patients as it once was during week 2 and week 3 [since the lockdown is implemented],” Borromeo said during the company’s online briefing.
Suspected Covid-19 infections started to go down at an average of 10 percent to 15 percent starting weeks 4 to 6, but cases slightly rose during weeks 7 and 8, he said. AC Health has kept 62 Familydoc primary care and 7 Healthway multi-specialty clinics open to serve as triage points for suspected Covid-19 cases and to cater to the majority of non-Covid-19 patients in need. To date, the clinic network has triaged around 9,700 probable and 8,900 suspect cases.
Borromeo said data collected from its network of clinics can become a leading indicator, and there’s a need to raise the alarm bells again if cases increase, such as when it reached the 500 confirmed cases or more per day as collected by the Department of Health.
At the moment, the country is averaging at about 200 suspected coronavirus cases per day.
“By and large we feel that the cases has been managed but of course we all need to be vigilant from the threat of second and third waves [of Covid-19 infections],” he said.
AC Health has led the conversion of Qualimed Sta. Rosa into a Covid-19 referral hospital. The triage holding area was launched on May 18 and it can accommodate up to 12 mild cases of Covid-19. The hospital has also created an additional 31 inpatient and eight intensive care unit beds exclusive for Covid-19.
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