GETTING placed under quarantine and in isolation is no fun, but is not a totally miserable experience.
Passengers of the Etihad Airways flight EY0424 are living “comfortably” inside the emerging and re-emerging disease center of the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) in Cebu City.
Before they were shut out from the world in “negative pressure rooms,” nurses garbed in special protective suits, face masks and gloves took specimen samples from the passengers’ nose and throat.
The swab samples were taken to the VSMMC laboratory for tests which take at least 72 hours to complete.
While waiting for the results, the patients are confined in the air-conditioned “negative pressure rooms” near Ward 10 where nurses monitor their condition 24/7 through closed-circuit television cameras installed in each of the six rooms.
The rooms are pressurized so that air from inside won’t escape. Special equipment suck up the air inside and filter out the microbes.
The VSMMC’s Emerging and Re-emerging Disease Facility was put up in 2009 as part of the Department of Health’s upgrade following the 2004 global outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) which killed hundreds of people, mostly in China.
Two deaths were recorded in the Philippines but none in Cebu.
The SARS outbreak likewise, led to the enactment of the Quarantine Act in the Philippines which was drafted to address similarly situated concerns such as the current MERS alert.
Dr. Emmanuel Gines, chairman of the VSMMC Department of Emergency Medicine and media liaison officer, said the suspected patients are housed comfortably.
“They are treated as private (room) patients,” Gines said.
There is no special diet for them nor other medical tests except for the swab tests before they were taken to the isolation rooms.
“It’s just an ocular observation because there is no manifestation of disease (yet),” Gines said.
While in isolation, patients are not allowed to have direct contact with anyone except for medical personnel assigned in the facility.
Ideally the patients occupy one room each, however, because of the limited number of rooms, some families have to stay in one room.
Each room has its own toilet and bath and bed. There are no television sets, but they’re allowed to use their mobile phones.
Gines said some medical staffers send phone credits (load) to patients to enable them to keep in touch with their anxious families.