After dangling ‘competitive offer,’ Cebu City still needs nurses

| CDND File Photo

CEBU CITY, Philippines – Despite dangling relatively ‘competitive wages,’ the Cebu City Government is still facing difficulties in hiring nurses.

The city recently opened another isolation facility for asymptomatic COVID-19 patients, the ‘Mega Stay-In Center’ at the Cebu City Sports Center (CCSC), which has the capacity to accommodate up to 150 patients.

It was established in order to prevent already overwhelmed hospitals here from further buckling under the pressure of rising COVID-19 cases, and in the event quarantine centers can no longer accept more infected individuals.

But the city still lacked personnel to man its Mega Stay-In Center.

Local officials reiterated their call urging nurses to apply as they received reports of low turn out in registration while some of the city’s applicants are starting to back out.

Acting City Mayor Michael Rama announced that he also sought assistance from the Cebu Provincial Government in recruiting health workers to address the COVID-19 outbreak in the capital.

“Just this day, I had a call with Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia… I said, ‘Gov, we need medical and health staff.’ said Rama in his speech during the ceremonial blessing of the Mega Stay-In Center on Sunday, August 8.

“We have the beds. We have the facilities. But we need your (Cebu province) help in providing manpower. Because without them, we cannot properly respond,” he added.

Since last week, the city government announced that they are opening more slots for nurses to attend to COVID-19 patients.

On social media, the city’s Public Information Office (PIO) and the Office of the Vice Mayor (Rama’s) have also shared job bulletins, dangling wages ranging between P38,000 to P45,000 for each nurse successfully hired.

However, until now, local officials found it hard to convince licensed nurses to apply for their job openings.

Councilor Eduardo Rama Jr., in a follow-up interview with reporters, said they are initially targeting to hire a total of 200 nurses.

Of this number, 100 will be deployed to privately owned hospitals, through the Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH-7), while the remaining 100 will be in city-owned health and quarantine facilities such as Barangay Isolation Centers (BICs) and the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC).

So far, they have only entertained around 10 applicants.

“From what information we received, some of them decided to back out because of the risks. But later on, we will be receiving requests from applicants,” Councilor Rama said in Cebuano.

“There are a lot of factors (behind the low turnout),” he added.

Critical care utilization rate in both public and private hospitals here are nearing critical and alarming levels as it reached 69.5 percent as of August 7, according to the COVID-19 tracker from the Department of Health (DOH).

Hospital occupancy rates are usually gauged to determine the gravity of the outbreak in an area.

Local health experts pointed to the presence and detection of the highly transmissible Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, tagged as B.1.167.2, behind the rising cases of infections.

Since August 1, Cebu City was placed under Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ) due to the rapid transmission of the virus.

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