Revived Hospital Now Ready As Baguio’s Covid-19 Quarantine Center

April 19, 2020 Metro BLISTT

BAGUIO CITY (April 17, 2020) — The Santo Nino Hospital, decommissioned in 2009, is now ready as a quarantine center for persons afflicted with the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).
Mayor Benjamin Magalong during Friday morning’s turn-over ceremony thanked the Fernandez clan, owners of the hospital, which was recently used as classrooms for similarly Fernandez clan-owned Baguio Central University.
Magalong also thanked the doctors including those from Saint Louis Hospital of the Sacred Heart, who will have direct referral management of the facility that can be used as quarantine center, and Dr. Willy Occidental, who brokered with the Fernandezes, to allow use of the facility. “Dr. Willy is really one of my companions who persevered to convince the family (in allowing use of the facility),” Magalong said.
Sto Nino Hospital is the second quarantine center to open here within the week after Teachers Camp started accommodating returning overseas Filipino workers on Thursday (April 16), said City Administrator Engr. Bonifacio dela Pena.
Dela Pena is looking at 37 rooms for Covid-19 patients at the Santo Nino Hospital aside from 10 rooms where ventilators had been set up. The ventilators were purchased by the city government at PhP 800,000 each or PhP 8 million that has been sourced out from the PhP150 million Covid-19 funds that the city council appropriated.
Friday’s blessing was just a turn over ceremony from the owners to the city. Papers are needed yet to be completed like accreditation and license to operate from the Department of Health, said SLHSH medical director Dr. Paul Adlai Quitiquit. “Marami pang papers na kailangang gawin (we still have many papers to process) and it will be operated by the city with help from the four city hospitals in running [this hospital] – Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center, SLHSH, Pines City Hospital and Notre Dame de Chartres Hospital.”
Quitiquit said that they are looking at May 11 for the formal start of operation of the Baguio Central University owned hospital which has a maximum 50 rooms.
“But then we can start using it once the Lindi Hotel is filled up,” he said.
Lindi Hotel is a 32-room hotel along Legarda Road whose owners offered as treatment center for Covid-19 patients. At least 30 personnel are needed in Sto. Nino on shifts including buffer staff that will be on full time if required. The newly refurbished hospital, through the efforts of Department of Public Works and Highways, City Engineering Office and various local contractors will have 10 community isolation areas. Occidental, meanwhile, said that he was appointed as temporary administrator of the new facility under the city.
The city will hire the detailed personnel at the hospital once it starts operation. “Everything will be taken for by the city, they will hire the personnel and the DoH of course to help,” the physician said. “Sana huwag magamit (Hopefully it will not be used), but if we use it then we need ECG monitors, dialysis machines, x-rays, ventilators,” he said adding that the city may include other services like operating room and delivery rooms.
“We will be installing machines for that,” he said. The facility can be used by the city until, and if, it is needed. Yet another educational institution is being eyed as a quarantine center — the Baguio City High School — the city’s biggest high school which is home to more than 7,000 junior high school students. ”City High will be the next quarantine center as the mayor and I are negotiating for its use” added dela Pena.
Artemio A. Dumlao/ABN