MANILA, April 14 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines is taking a leaf from China's experience in battling against the highly infectious coronavirus disease, a senior Philippine health official said on Tuesday.

Kenneth Ronquillo, assistant secretary of the Philippine Department of Health, made the remarks when he accompanied Chinese medical experts visiting a converted quarantine facility at the Philippine International Conference Center in Manila.

The 12-member Chinese anti-epidemic medical expert team comprises medical experts in the fields of infectious disease prevention and control, clinic treatment, and laboratory testing. They arrived in Manila on April 5 to share their first-hand experiences and best practices to the Philippine healthcare workers.

"We get very good advice from the team. They share their experiences and compare them with what we have here in the Philippines," Ronquillo told Xinhua in an interview.

He said the team shared their first-hand experiences on how to stop the spread of COVID-19 in Wuhan, the former epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak in China's Hubei province.

"The best practices that they shared are very helpful (in levelling up the Philippines's COVID-19 response). We just hope that the good practices that they have will be useful here in the Philippine setting," he added.

Ronquillo said that team has also given the Philippines recommendations on how to improve the hospital set-up and the quarantine facilities in Metro Manila where majority of the COVID-19 patients are reported.

Since their arrival, the Chinese experts have been keeping a nonstop working schedule and never rested even one day, meeting with philippine health officials, visiting local hospitals, institutions and conducting online consultations with local people.

The team observed and gave recommendations on the right things to do to improve our infection prevention and control, critical care and laboratory operations among other things, Ronquillo said.

"They've seen all the facilities, the rooms, the baths, the toilets, the quarters of stay-in medical and nursing personnel. They've seen all of it so they were impressed at how we did it here in the Philippines," Ronquillo added.

Weng Shangeng, head of the team, said their group was impressed by how the Philippines managed to quickly set up a shelter hospital in just six days.

"The facilities are relatively complete and the section-setting reasonable," Weng said, stressing the importance of putting up several makeshift hospitals to isolate the confirmed COVID-19 patients.

Weng said there are discussions on how to set up a layout of "two channels in three areas" in a facility consisting of contaminated area, potential contaminated area and clean area, and the two channels consisting of medical staff channel, and patient channel.

"Such kind of layout is conducive to protecting medical personnel as well as avoiding cross-infection," Weng added.

Weng said the team suggested a healthy working schedule for healthcare workers, from a three-shift to four-shift daily schedule.

The medical team, which will leave on April 19, also brought with them a planeload of medical supplies from the Chinese government, including 30 non-invasive ventilators, as well as thousands of medical protective suits, N95 face masks, surgical masks and medical face shields.

The Philippines now has registered a total of 4,932 COVID-19 cases, including 242 recoveries and 315 deaths. Enditem

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