MANILA, Philippines — Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said the World Health Organization (WHO) is giving the Philippines test kits which he said would speed up the detection of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in the country.
“Ang sabi sa akin ng country representative ng WHO ay bibigyan tayo ng mga test kits kasi sabi ko bilisan natin kasi key dito yung mabilisan na credible testing ng novel coronavirus, so yung test kit, yan makapagpapabilis yan,” Duque said in an interview with dzMM.
(The WHO’s country representative said they will give us test kits because I said let’s be quick. The key here is the fact and credible testing of the novel coronavirus, so these test kits will speed it up).
“Mas mabilis yung test, kung negative, ‘O sige alis kagad (sa hospital).’ Kasi ngayon nagaantay tayo ng matagalan so kumakain ng oras, nagkakaroon ng congestion,” he added.
(The tests will be quicker if the patient tested negative, ‘Alright, you can be discharged). Because right now, the wait for the confirmation is long, it eats up time, there is congestion of patients).
The Philippines has confirmed its third case of the virus, one of whom was the first death reported outside of China.
The three cases are all of Chinese nationals from Wuhan City, the epicenter of the epidemic.
The Department of Health (DOH) earlier said that the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) would accredit four hospitals—two government and two private—that could help in the confirmation of specimen for the 2019-nCoV.
Initially, the DOH sent samples to the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory in Australia for the confirmation of the virus until the RITM recently brought ribonucleic acid (RNA) primers to perform the test.
“So, sabi ko ‘Please, please WHO we need these test kits as soon as possible.’ Para ang turn around the patient, ang turn around time, mas mabilis,” Duque went on.
(So, I said ‘Please, please WHO we need these test kits as soon as possible.’ So that the turn around of the patient, the turn around time is quicker).
The DOH said 178 patients are currently under investigation for the 2019-nCoV.