President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday night appealed to the private hospitals to increase their allotted beds for coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) patients.

Duterte made his appeal during his talk to the people after meeting the core members of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) at the Malago Clubhouse in Malacañang.

“What struck my attention is this appeal to private hospitals to increase the number of beds dedicated to Covid patients. I hope you can set aside more,” Duterte said after listening to the IATF’s report on Covid-19 response.

Duterte made his request to the private hospitals as the Department of Health (DOH) logged additional 4,699 Covid-19 infections that increased the country’s tally to 265,888 with 259 deaths.

“I hope you can add [to the number of beds] because still, the numbers are increasing. The infections vary. In some cases, and in some provinces or cities, there’s a fast recovery rate, while others are lagging behind, and probably this is because of the prior infection that was not detected during the height of the pandemic,” Duterte said.

As of Sept. 13, the DOH said it has 21,500 total bed capacity dedicated to Covid-19 patients.

Occupied are about 50 percent of 1,900 intensive care unit beds; 44 percent of 13,700 isolation beds; and 48 percent of 5,900 ward beds.

About 27 percent of 2,200 ventilators are in use. (PNA)