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MANILA - The emergency room of state-run Philippine General Hospital (PGH) will be closed starting June 1 for renovation, the hospital announced Tuesday.

PGH spokesperson Dr. Jonas del Rosario said the renovation may be completed within 4 months at the earliest, or up to a year.

"They did not give us the exact time, how long the duration will be for the renovation but it will be approximately... the earliest time would be 4 months. Realistically, it’s probably going to be more than that, maybe roughly about a year," he said.

Del Rosario said emergency patients will be accepted in the makeshift ER in the hospital's Ward 14, but said its capacity will be limited.

"Unfortunately, the capacity of that ward is very small compared to the capacity of our emergency room," he said.

"We will probably look into other ways to absorb this (emergency patients), maybe we can look into other places in the hospital."

Rosario advised patients that the government hospital will accept only real emergency cases.

"The other thing is, the transfers from other hospitals really have to be coordinated. They cannot just bring a patient, let’s say from a far-flung province or hospital, to go to PGH because there’s a possibility that they could not be entertained or admitted, we don’t really want to do that," he said.

"But the real emergencies like trauma, heart attack, stroke, definitely we will attend to this and we will stabilize these patients, and if we can absorb them and admit them then we will. But if not, we have to transfer them to other hospitals."