Gov’t eyes 100 more COVID-19 test labs

BAGUIO CITY, Benguet, Philippines — The government plans to put up 100 coronavirus testing laboratories, in addition to the 39 it already has, to speed up testing for the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19), according to Carlito Galvez Jr., chief of the national task force against COVID-19.

“When [the epidemic] started, we only had the [Research Institute for Tropical Medicine] and three other laboratories [for COVID-19 testing], now we already have 39 laboratories, and we aim to have 100 more,” he told reporters here.

That means the government would have to put up 61 more laboratories to ramp up capacity and meet its target of 30,000 polymerase chain reaction tests per day by the end of May.

On May 5, Bases Conversion and Development Authority president Vincent Dizon, chief of the government testing program, said the government needed at least 78 laboratories to reach the target.

But with only seven days left in May, the government is still 39 laboratories short of the original target of 78.

But both Galvez and Dizon have said the government was aware of the importance of tracing, testing and treating COVID-19 cases and cited Vietnam’s success in building 112 laboratories in a little more than three months.

Galvez said the government would employ rapid test kits—which detect antibodies instead of the coronavirus itself—and the national task force has already bought 200,000 rapid test kits for distribution to Metro Manila, Cebu, Davao and other areas with high COVID-19 infection.

—Kimberlie Quitasol and Yolanda Sotelo