Concepcion: Companies setting up test centers; Garin help sought
Businesses are looking to put up testing centers for their employees, Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Jose Concepcion III said on Thursday.
Concepcion said in an online meeting that he had asked Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin, a former secretary of health, to help speed up the provision of testing centers for the private sector.
The Go Negosyo founder held a Zoom meeting on Thursday for interested and current participants in Project Ark, which plans to use antibody rapid test kits as complementary tools to the Department of Health’s polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing.
Rapid test kits yield quick coronavirus test results, though at the risk of giving false negatives or false positives.
Project Ark is named after the kits.
Within three months
“Beyond the rapid test kit, the private sector now is looking to set up PCR-based testing facilities,” Concepcion said, without providing information on the cost of putting up testing centers.
He said he had requested Garin to draw up a plan for the provision of testing centers for businesses, which may be in existing laboratories or new centers, within three months.
Concepcion, who heads food and beverage company RFM Corp., said it was important to do massive testing “if we want to open up the economy.”
He has proposed a shift to quarantine for barangays with coronavirus infections, saying barangays without infections should not be “penalized.”
“We try to avoid locking down Metro Manila, locking down provinces, because when we lock down provinces or [Metro Manila], that means we fail in the first level of defense. We fail in the community defense,” he said.
Efforts to suppress the spread of the coronavirus should “never escalate” beyond the barangay, he said.
Requirement for employers
Also on Thursday, Sen. Joel Villanueva said regular, random tests for the new coronavirus must be part of the measures that employers must follow once they are allowed to resume operations.
Villanueva called on the Department of Labor and Employment to require companies to conduct such tests.
“Industries that are necessary to boost the economy may be allowed to operate provided they follow strict protocols on social distancing, sanitizing and use of personal protective equipment, among others,” the senator said in a statement.
He said a paper by the University of the Philippines School of Economics had recommended random testing of workers for surveillance and monitoring to stem the contagion.
“This is very important to make sure that we also catch those who are asymptomatic,” he said.
Employees who could work from home should continue to do so, he added, especially if they are senior citizens considered vulnerable to the disease.
Companies should also provide temporary lodging and transportation for its workers to minimize their risk of contracting the virus, he added. —With a report from Leila B. Salaverria
