THE Department of Health (DOH) yesterday said the One Hospital Command Center (OHCC), a referral system for healthcare providers that also offers telemedicine services, has been receiving an “overflowing” number of calls at over 500 each day.

Health Undersecretary Leopoldo Vega, the country’s treatment czar, said the OHCC has been averaging around 530 calls per day.

“Tumataas talaga ito compared ito sa first week of July na ang incoming calls namin nasa 110 to 120 calls, so medyo talagang tumataas at saka kinakaya naman po namin ‘yung number of calls,” he said.

Vega also said the OHCC logged some 600 outgoing calls since staff need to resolve backlogs.

In a separate briefing, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the OHCC registered 2,145 calls from August 15 to 21 alone. Of this number, 302 calls for hospital referral and 615 calls for referral to isolation and quarantine facilities were resolved.

“Sa ngayon, talagang overflowing ang tumatawag sa ating One Hospital Command Center,” she said.

Vergeire renewed the DOH’s call for local governments to set up their own triage system to help decongest the OHCC.

Meanwhile, Vergeire noted that many hospitals still have not complied with the mandate to increase their coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) bed capacity to 30 percent for the private sector and 50 percent for public facilities when there is an uptick in infections.

“As of August 24, there were these 59 out of the 443 government hospitals which are still below the 30 percent COVID-19 allocation for beds and 220 out of the 843 or 26 percent of private hospitals still below the 20 percent COVID-19 bed allocation,” she said.

The DOH urged healthcare facilities to increase their capacity for COVID-19 patients as the country continues to battle a renewed rise in cases.

Medical groups earlier stressed that there are not enough health workers to match an increase in COVID-19 bed capacity.

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Lee Ann P. Ducusin