Two additional quarantine facilities (QFs) with a maximum bed capacity of 120 will be opened by the city government here as cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) continue to rise.

“We are still opening more quarantine facilities but these are schools. Our Sooc quarantine facility and the St. Therese Hospital are already almost full so we are expanding our quarantine facilities in schools to cater to more patients,” said Gabriel Umadhay, Iloilo City Covid Team in charge of quarantine facilities, in a press conference on Monday.

He said the city currently has 10 existing QFs composed of five private and five public facilities with a total bed capacity of 500.

Two of these facilities are catering to returning overseas Filipino workers (ROFs) and suspected cases.

There is also a dedicated 15-bed facility for pregnant women at the La Paz Maternity and Reproductive Health Clinic, which is currently catering to seven patients.

“As of the moment, we have a total of 254 patients in our facilities. They are only experiencing mild symptoms such as runny nose, occasional cough, and sore throat,” he added.

In the same press conference, Iloilo City Covid Team focal person Dr. Roland Jay Fortuna said cases in the city are still increasing, with the health care utilization rate reaching 52.96 percent as of this month.

There are already 77 admissions, which started to hike five days ago.

“(On) January 14 we had the highest number of cases we had since the start of the pandemic, which is 295 (positive) cases in just one day,” he said, adding that on January 15 the city recorded 276, and 177 on January 16.

Based on the latest report of the Department of Health as of Sunday, Iloilo City has a total of 23,367 confirmed infections, with 1,498 active cases, 21,242 recoveries and 627 deaths. (PNA)