Private hospitals in the capital Manila, Philippines, have stopped accepting patients infected with nCoV as the number of infected people and those in need of testing is increasing.

`It’s like wartime,` said Eugenio Ramos, a doctor and leader of The Medical City private hospital, one of the first places to refuse people infected with nCoV.

The Philippines has reported relatively fewer cases of nCoV infection than many other countries in Southeast Asia, with more than 800 of which more than 50 have died.

`More and more people are coming, a lot of people are afraid, one of them is in a serious stage of developing the disease,` Ramos said, adding that medical facilities were so overloaded that patients who should have been

This is a scene similar to hospitals in countries seriously affected by Covid-19, but it happened less than three weeks since the Philippines, a country of 107 million people, detected its first case of infection.

The situation in the Philippines is similar to Indonesia, the most populous country in Southeast Asia, where the death rate from nCoV is about 8.3%, the highest in the region and nearly double the rate of 4.5% worldwide.

Former Philippine Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral said the reported infection rate was probably just the `tip of the iceberg`, because the country has only tested more than 2,100 cases so far.

`We cannot assess the extent of the outbreak until we test about 10,000 to 20,000 people,` Cabral said.

An officer waits on a bus transporting medical staff in Quezon City, metropolitan Manila, Philippines, on March 20.

The Philippines has taken drastic measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 after discovering its first domestic case on March 7, becoming the third country after China and Italy to impose strict restrictions on people.

The Philippines sends about 19,000 doctors and nurses to train abroad each year.

One emergency room medical staff member said patients could have to wait up to six hours and even inexperienced staff were sent to treat critically ill patients due to staff shortages.

Santo Tomas University Hospital has 530 medical staff quarantined.

Under pressure from 11 private hospitals, the Philippine government has set aside three public hospitals to serve as special Covid-19 treatment centers, but they themselves are under stress.

`We have many reasons to panic,` private hospitals wrote in a letter calling for support.

Richard Enecilla, chief of emergency medicine at St.

`The way the epidemic broke out caught us off guard. The number of infections increased also when our strength decreased,` Enecilla said.