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The Department of Health (DOH) registered 3,483 new confirmed cases of Covid on Tuesday, according to the total of tests carried out by 93 of the 110 current operating laboratories, bringing the total number of infections in the country to 224,264.
Of the confirmed cases, 62,655 (27.9 percent) are active cases, 158,012 (70.5 percent) have recovered, and 3,597 (1.6 percent) have died.
DOH recorded 464 recoveries and 39 deaths as of 4 p.m. on September 1.
The main regions with cases in the last two weeks were the National Capital Region (NCR) with 1,689 or 53 percent, Region 4A (639 or 20 percent) and Region 3 (213 or 7 percent).
Meanwhile, DOH announced that it has partnered with the local government of Quezon City to implement the country’s first end-to-end telemedicine project, which will strengthen the capacity of the local government unit (LGU) to provide patients access to medical consultations.
Quezon City is the first LGU in NCR and Calabarzon to implement telemedicine that connects to the national Covid-19 surveillance system.
The telemedicine project seeks to strengthen the provision of primary care services not only to give patients faster and more efficient access to medical consultation, but also to allow secondary and tertiary health care providers to focus on more cases. serious that only they are able to tackle.
DOH views telemedicine as an facilitator for referral to a health center where patients no longer need to be transferred from one health center to another due to the unavailability of doctors or services.
Once a doctor sees the patient via telemedicine, the patient’s data is stored in an electronic medical record capable of transmitting the information to other facilities.
“We are implementing this telemedicine project one LGU at a time to support the provision of primary care services, and we urge more LGUs to adopt this program so that we can have an end-to-end system nationwide,” said Director Enrique. Tayag. of the DOH’s Information Technology and Knowledge Management Service.
“We already have telemedicine through the DOH Covid-19 hotline 1555, and this LGU-based telemedicine will further enhance our efforts,” he added.
Dr. Tayag added that other DOH telemedicine platforms can be reached through the Covid-19 hotline 02-894-COVID (02-894-26843) and telemedicine partners SeeYouDoc, CloudPx, HealthNowPH.
At the moment, the DOH Covid-19 hotline allows patients to speak with physicians over the phone, while DOH’s telemedicine partners make online physician consultations available through telemedicine-based appointments. the Web.
“Given our situation now, telemedicine has a multiplier effect since our limited number of doctors can practice their field and serve more patients,” explained Pierangelo A. Domínguez, head of the Office of Local Economic Promotions and Investments and project coordinator. in Quezon City.
The telemedicine project aims to monitor patients who were listed as close contacts of a suspected or confirmed Covid-19 positive patient and those who are already in quarantine. Patients are regularly scheduled for a telemedicine consultation with a doctor who conducts their monitoring through videoconferences.
In the event that medical prescriptions are needed in the telemedicine consultation, electronic prescriptions are sent via electronic medical records to patient emails.
In barangay health centers, doctors monitor patients who are scheduled for the day through telemedicine, while doctors in temporary monitoring and treatment facilities do not need to enter the actual patient room, as they can do their medical rounds in front of computer screens.
DOH has high hopes that telemedicine will minimize the spread of the virus among healthcare workers directly exposed to Covid-19.
DOH continues to reach out to cities like Muntinlupa, Caloocan, and San Juan to introduce similar technologies, which are directly connected to the government’s national Covid-19 surveillance system.
For cities with existing telemedicine projects such as Taguig and Makati, DOH continues to advocate for the adoption of national guidelines for the practice of telemedicine developed in coordination with the University of the Philippines and the National Privacy Commission.
