Cebu City’s hospitals are overwhelmed and “full to the brim,” owing to a surge of Covid-19 cases. This was confirmed last week by Dr. Peter Mancao, deputy chief of the city’s vaccine task force, in a press briefing on July 28.
But if Cebuanos—or anyone in the country at all—needed the point to be driven home further, photos of patients spilling out into the street have gone viral over social media.
The photos taken outside Cebu’s Chong Hua Hospital show a line of ambulances parked around the hospital, along with private cars that seem to be doubling as hospital beds, with oxygen tanks hooked up. Patients are also seen on folding cots on the outside walkways, some of them requiring oxygen.
“Our three major hospitals [Chong Hua Hospital, Perpetual Succour Hospital, and Cebu Doctors’ Hospital], their ambulance responders, they won’t take calls anymore,” Mancao was reported as saying by the Manila Bulletin following his press briefing.
Local newspaper Sunstar Cebu confirmed that there were 31 patients outside the hospital awaiting admission. Councilor David Tumulak told Sunstar that at least two of the vehicles have been parked outside Chong Hua since Friday, July 30.
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