FILE PHOTO: A health worker gets her temperature checked before getting a COVID-19 swab test in a tent set up in a hospital parking lot in Manila, Philippines, April 15, 2020. REUTERS/Eloisa Lopez
MANILA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization has recognised a worrisome trend of infections among healthcare workers in the Philippines and is working closely with the country’s health ministry on ways of addressing it.
Abdi Mahamud, the COVID-19 incident manager for the Western Pacific region, said that as many as 13% of cases in the Philippines were health workers although there was no exact data to explain that.
He told a briefing that it could be linked to the availability of personal protective equipment and levels of exposure to the coronavirus among infected individuals in the Philippines, which has 6,459 cases and 428 deaths.
Reporting by Martin Petty; Editing by Shri Navaratnam