SAY AHH A laboratory technician gets a swab test in a hospital at Santa Rosa, Laguna province, on Tuesday under a mandatory test program for health workers who have been exposed to coronavirus patients. The government has launched an aggressive mass testing program to locate as many as 15,000 possible carriers of the virus that causes COVID-19. —EARVIN PERIAS
MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte has approved the procurement of rapid test kits to boost the country’s screening for the new coronavirus to 900,000 tests in the next three months, despite their rejection by the Department of Health (DOH) for use in mass testing.
The fresh kits will be in addition to the 100,000 now in use to find carriers of the virus that has infected more than 5,000 Filipinos.
The government introduced a more aggressive testing program for the coronavirus to locate as many as 15,000 unknown infections, despite having implemented some of Asia’s strictest and earliest lockdown measures.
Report to Congress
Mr. Duterte announced the expansion early on Tuesday in his third weekly report to Congress on how his administration was using a multibillion-peso emergency spending program it approved in March to enable the government to respond to the coronavirus crisis.
The President said the DOH had designated 11 laboratories and hospitals to do the testing for SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19, a severe respiratory disease that had downed more than 5,000 Filipinos, killing over 300 of them as of Tuesday.
Earlier on Monday, Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles, spokesperson for the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases, said there were 15 laboratories in the country accredited to run coronavirus tests.
The task force earlier said the government could reach 3,000 tests a day this week with the accreditation of more testing centers.
Nograles said 28 institutions were undergoing the DOH certification process and 37 others had signified intention to seek accreditation. (See related story in Regions, Page A7.)With the expanded capacity, the task force said the government would be able to process 8,000 to 10,000 tests a day by the end of April, when strict lockdown measures imposed on the entire island of Luzon would be lifted.
Not stand-alone tests
The DOH, however, said the rapid test kits the government was buying would not be used in the mass testing because their results needed further validation.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the test based on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) remained the “gold standard” in determining if patients had contracted the new coronavirus.
If patients test negative or positive using the rapid antibody test kit, their results need to be confirmed using the PCR test, Vergeire said.
“We reiterate that the rapid antibody test kits are not stand-alone tests. [Its results] are still to be validated and confirmed by our PCR tests,” she said.
Vergeire, however, did not explain why there was a need for the government to spend billions of pesos to acquire rapid test kits. But she noted that the purchase of the kits by the Office of Civil Defense was “in line with the expansion of the country’s testing capacity.”
Nograles explained that the President had decided to use both the rapid test and the PCR test kits to reduce the country’s reliance on donated kits.
“Basically, he is saying, ‘OK, let’s use both and I am ordering the government through the Office of Civil Defense or the Department of Budget and Management to already now start purchasing those rapid test kits.’ Before that decision, we only received donated rapid test kits. But now the President has given the go-signal to already start purchasing rapid test kits so we won’t rely on donors,” Nograles said.
He said the rapid test kits the government wanted to buy were approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and that the government was sure about their safety.
In his report to Congress, Duterte said the DOH was taking part in the World Health Organization Solidarity Trial, an international clinical search for drugs that could be used to treat COVID-19 patients.
He said the DOH was considering use of favipiravir, an anti-influenza drug made in Japan and sold under the brand Avigan, in its clinical trials and was looking for sources in Japan and China.
FDA approval
Duterte said the Food and Drug Administration required pharmaceutical companies to register drugs that they claimed could be used in treating COVID-19.
“Until such products are proven safe and effective, they cannot be dispensed to the public and even therapeutic claims cannot be permitted,” he said.
The President said the government continued to look for extra space for coronavirus patients, with the Commission on Higher Education approving the conversion of five universities and colleges into quarantines.
He said the Department of Education had also allowed the use of 473 public schools as quarantines on the request of 95 local governments.
Currently, the country has 3,194 beds in government and private hospitals and in converted venues for sports and entertainment events dedicated to coronavirus cases.
Of the total, 2,031 beds are in Metro Manila, the epicenter of the local coronavirus outbreak, and 544 are in other parts of Luzon. The Visayas has 370 beds and Mindanao has 249.
So far, 1,760 of the beds are occupied and 209 of 1,051 ventilators are being used.
No clear testing guidelines
On Tuesday, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian urged the DOH to quickly issue guidelines to local governments for the mass testing.
Gatchalian said it was not clear whether local governments were required to report to the DOH the results of the tests they were carrying out.
“The rules for [local governments] doing mass testing are not clear,” he said. “In fact, there’s no guideline on how local governments should conduct mass testing. Many local governments are doing it on their own.”
Gatchalian said uniform guidelines would also prevent the implementation of conflicting safety programs, such as the misting and spraying of disinfectants in residential areas that local governments had started to do before the DOH declared that there was no evidence these practices were effective in killing the coronavirus.
—WITH REPORTS FROM JOVIC YEE, AND MARLON RAMOS