1M more testing kits boost Covid response
June 28, 2020
With the arrival of 1 million more testing kits for the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), the Department of Health (DoH) expects to push past its testing target.
During a virtual press briefing Saturday, National Task Force Covid-19 Deputy Chief Implementer Vivencio Dizon said the kits arrived in the country on June 21 and would help the government reach the number of patients tested in the country to 1 million by the end of July.
As of June 25, the country had tested 610,052 individuals, with a daily average of 16,000 tests per day, according to Dr. Beverly Ho, officer-in-charge director of the DoH-Health Promotion and Communication Service.
The kits will be distributed to provinces with the greatest number of infections, Health undersecretary and spokesman Maria Rosario Vergeire said during the Laging Handa public briefing.
Vergeire has made it clear that the acceleration in testing does not mean that the DoH is now embracing mass testing, since the department still bases its testing protocols on the high-risk groups. She said mass testing was a “one-time event” with no assurance that the person being tested would not get infected the next day.
“Kahit na i-test natin ang buong populasyon sa araw na ito, bukas, subjected to exposure lahat ng ‘yan (Even if we test the entire population today, tomorrow, they will be subjected to exposure). Not unless everyone stays at home and exposure won’t happen,” Vergeire said in an earlier briefing.
The DoH expanded the testing subgroups to include frontliners such as barangay health response emergency teams, personnel manning Covid-19 facilities and high-risk individuals such as pregnant women.
Dizon said with the additional testing kits, other frontline workers like food service and security personnel would now be included.
Vergeire added that media practitioners would be included as well.
As of June 26, Covid-19 cases in the country jumped to 34,073 with 1,224 deaths, and 9,182 recoveries.
The community quarantine across the country will expire at the end of the month unless modified by President Rodrigo Duterte.
The President is expected to announce the new quarantine classifications on or before June 29, Malacañang said.
Metro Manila and several other areas are under general community quarantine, until June 30. Cebu City is under enhanced community quarantine while Talisay City is under modified enhanced community quarantine.
Sen. Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippine Red Cross (PRC), pushed for more testing, saying the Covid-19 infection rate had not flattened and Filipinos were growing weary of months-long lockdowns.
“Testing is the key. The whole testing in the Philippines right now is at 0.4 percent and that is very far from the 13-percentage standard of the World Health Organization. We have not tested enough but we have the capacity. We have to move our economy and so we have to move testing,” he said.
Gordon issued the statement as the PRC opened its biggest molecular laboratory in the country at its former headquarters in Port Area, Manila.
He said the molecular laboratory is equipped with seven ribonucleic acids (RNAs) with 14 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machines that can test 14,000 samples a day.
“This will really help us ramp up our testing capacity so that more people will get tested all over the country. With more testing capacity, we can easily identify those who are positive and segregate them from those who were tested negative,” said Gordon.
The new laboratory in Manila, where the PRC’s Hemodialysis Center is also located, received its accreditation from the DoH as a certified Covid-19 testing center on May 15.
It has tested over 18,000 of the 149,116 specimen samples that the Red Cross has processed.
Other Red Cross testing centers are in Mandaluyong City, Pampanga and Zambales.
Twenty-six percent of the total tests in the country were done by the Red Cross.
