MANILA: (UCAN): The Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City, Metro Manila, the Philippines, answered a plea from the Red Cross and local officials to use its facilities as isolation units for Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) patients as the number of confirmed cases ballooned to 819,164 with 14,059 deaths on April 7.
Doctors had recently appealed for more isolation facilities as hospitals in the capital and nearby provinces were at breaking point (Sunday Examiner, April 11).
“We now have an isolation facility at Ateneo de Manila University. Thirty-two classrooms at Ateneo’s high school will be turned into isolation wards for Covid-19 patients,” lawmaker and Philippine Red Cross president, Richard Gordon, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Gordon said the move was made possible thanks to local authorities giving permission for the use of schools as makeshift wards while face-to-face classes were suspended.
The legislator thanked Ateneo’s president, Jesuit Father Bobby Yap, for making the university’s facilities available.
“This openness of the university is very important in our present situation. This will relieve pressure on our hospitals which are already full. I hope other Catholic schools will follow,” he said.
Medical experts said on April 5 that the spike in Covid-19 cases was mostly caused by asymptomatic patients who spread the virus in their homes.
“The real battleground is the home. If there are asymptomatic patients living in the same house, they are potential super-spreaders of the virus … that’s why we really need testing and isolation,“ Health Department official, Maria Rosario Vergeire, said on April 6.
Gordon said the Ateneo isolation wards, due to open on April 8, would help solve the problem by providing space for asymptomatic patients to contain the virus.
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Father Emmanuel Afable of the Diocese of Sorsogon welcomed the Jesuits’ decision to help government efforts to resolve pandemic woes.
“The present lack of hospital beds clearly tells us the government cannot do this alone. This is everybody’s concern,” Father Afable said.
He proposed that other religious congregations help patients under quarantine in such facilities.
“To my fellow brothers in the priesthood, we may use this opportune time to have a ministry to tend to the sick who are under quarantine in these isolation wards. Perhaps we can feed and spearhead a programme to accompany them spiritually in their confinement,” Father Afable suggested.
