MANILA (UPDATE) - Private hospitals could reach full capacity within 3 to 4 weeks if the upward trend of COVID-19 cases continues, the president of the Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines said Friday.

"If we don’t do anything about it, most probably it will follow the trend, maybe in the next 3-4 weeks, if this is not abated, then we will be reaching the full capacity in the next 4 weeks," PHAP president Dr. Jose Rene De Grano told ANC's Headstart.

Asked if he believes healthcare workers would have to call a timeout again soon, he said: "Hopefully not, but that can happen. With strict health protocols, we’ll be able to avoid that."

Curfews and localized lockdowns imposed in several areas in the country, including Metro Manila, would be helpful in a sense that it would "restrict movement for unnecessary things," he said.

In August last year, President Rodrigo Duterte placed Metro Manila, Cavite, Laguna, Rizal and Bulacan back under modified enhanced community quarantine--the second strictest level of restriction--following a plea for "timeout" from health care workers as the number of COVID-19 cases ballooned to about 100,000.

The Philippines has been logging around 3,000 new cases daily for the past week, with Thursday's addition being the highest in a day since September last year.

The total number of coronavirus infections in the country stood at 607,048, according to the Department of Health.

• PH logs 3,749 new COVID-19 cases, highest since September

The number of active COVID-19 cases is 47,769, which is the highest since October 24 last year, according to monitoring by ABS-CBN Data Analytics Team.

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De Grano said private hospitals "can actually still sustain it," but they need help from the government "right now" to solve at least 3 problems: funding, staffing, and vaccination.

He said the income of hospitals "went down" at the start of the pandemic and "resources were down to at least minimum." He said currently, state insurer PhilHealth owes hospitals around P6 billion.

In its Circular 2020-0009, the agency has set benefit packages for in-patient care for probable or confirmed COVID-19 cases that develop mild to critical pneumonia, depending on the severity.

"We are asking government to please help us, please speed up the payment of PhilHealth," said De Grano.

Manpower is another problem, he said, because "a lot of nurses are resigning because they want to go overseas and some are transferring to government facilities."

"At least 50 percent of our nursing employees are out. I don’t know where the Department of Labor got their figure that we have 400,000 ready-to-work nurses. No, most of the private hospitals have decreased the staffing of the nurses by 50 percent and that is the hard truth," he said.

With a lean workforce, De Grano said hospitals are limiting the number of beds they can open to COVID-19 patients, and may not allot the usual 20 percent.

Vaccine deployment is also an issue, as some members of the group have reported that they haven't received the allocation for their health care staff. He said there were cases wherein other hospitals that weren't COVID-19 referral centers got the jabs first.

"In my own hospital, we are still waiting for the deployment of our own vaccine. If we are going to be a vaccination center, we have to have our health care workers vaccinated first, and right now we haven’t received our allotment," he said.

De Grano said the early arrival of coronavirus shots would have "helped a lot" because while these do not prevent transmission, it could "more or less minimize the fatalities."

The Philippines started rolling out vaccines last week, with about 1.1 million combined doses from Sinovac and AstraZeneca. Government officials have stated that they aim to inoculate most health care workers within March.

• Philippines eyes giving COVID-19 shots to all health workers in March

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