AT-HOME TREATMENT STAFF OVERWHELMED

[Anchor Lead]

With a soaring number of COVID-19 cases, more than 11,000 people are being treated at home. The problem now is that local district offices and district health centers are overwhelmed with work. They are struggling to keep up with the workload as they’re tasked with delivering treatment kits to an increasing number of patients and monitoring them at least twice a day.

[Pkg]

Boxes are piled up high in this district office. These are home treatment kits each containing a pulse oximeter, a thermometer, disinfectants and cold medicine.

[Soundbite] "It takes time to check them all since there are lots of defects."

Public employees at local district offices have to deliver dozens of these home treatment kits every day.

[Soundbite] "I left the treatment kit in front of the house. Can you check?"

Delivering additional prescription drugs to these patients also falls on the district office workers.

[Soundbite] Seo Seok-ji(General Affairs Division, Yangcheon-gu Dist. Office) : "Workers from the local rehabilitation center do delivery work. Contracted workers or district office employees take care of the rest."

[Soundbite] "You had a stuffy nose yesterday. How do you feel today?"

More people have been assigned to exclusively oversee treat-at-home patients but they can’t catch up with the speed of patient increase. Even nurses taking care of the elderly and the disabled have been tasked with checking on the conditions of home-treated patients.

[Soundbite] Jeong Moon-hee(Nurse, Seongdong-gu Dist. Office) : "We take turns to work the weekend shift. We are physically exhausted because we get no breaks."

Since there is not enough manpower, the rule of twice-a-day checkup often goes unobserved.

[Soundbite] Lee(Patient treated at home) : "I was told that I would get two calls a day, but I only got one. I was asked if my conditions got worse or if I have any discomfort. I don’t think the call lasted even 1 minute."

Patients are concerned if they can be treated properly once their conditions deteriorate.

[Soundbite] Lee(Patient treated at home) : "I post my conditions on an app but I’m not sure if it’s being checked properly."

District offices can only do so much in increasing personnel. The increasing home treatment workload eventually falls on local government employees and healthcare workers.