MANILA, Philippines — After reaching 11,000 COVID-19 tests a day, the Department of Health (DOH) bared Wednesday that it has observed a “downward trend” in the daily output of accredited testing laboratories since last week due to some operational issues.
For the last two days, the actual COVID-19 tests done by the testing centers has gone down to around 5,000 a day, while some laboratories reporting it did not conduct any test, data from the DOH’s daily Situational Report showed.
This came after the daily cumulative tests of all the testing laboratories breached the 11,000 mark last May 15 and May 16.
According to Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire, the slowdown is primarily because some laboratories lack sufficient supplies to conduct tests.
“We had a meeting with all our laboratories yesterday because we are seeing a downward trend,” Vergeire said in an online Kapihan sa Manila Bay media forum.
“One of the main issues again is the supplies. Some of our laboratories lack supplies for these past days na kailangan nating i-source out para mabigyan natin sila,” she added.
The DOH official likewise pointed out that the University of the Philippines-National Institutes of Health (UP-NIH) laboratory’s output was severely affected after its exhaust system broke down while the Bicol Diagnostic and Reference Laboratory — the lone COVID-19 testing center in the Bicol region — only resumed operations on Monday after being shut down due to the Typhoon Ambo.
There are also some private laboratories that are not operating during Sundays, Vergeire noted.
‘No more day-off’
Due to this, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III has given a directive to all COVID-19 testing laboratories to operate seven days a week.
“Nagkaroon na po si Sec. Duque ng directive kagabi na lahat po ng laboratoryo hindi na maaari pang magkaroon ng one day off para sa kanilang operations,” Vergeire said.
“Lahat ng laboratories has to operate, if they need to decontaminate they do it in their break times or during lull times in their processing,” she added.
All laboratories are also given respective targets to ensure that they would ramp up testing.
To date, the Philippines has 42 licensed laboratories for COVID-19 testing, of which 34 are capable of PCR tests, while eight are conducting GeneXpert rapid tests.
Earlier, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque claimed that the Philippines has already exceeded its target of conducting 30,000 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests per day.
Vergeire, however, explained that Roque was referring to the estimated maximum testing capacity of all the accredited laboratories and not the actual tests done daily.
But due to some external factors such as the availability of laboratory supplies, health human resource, infrastructure and equipment issues, Vergeire noted that the actual testing capacity of the country is still at 8,500 to 9,500 a day.
The DOH is eyeing to achieve 30,000 tests daily by the end of May—a goal it set after failing to reach its initial target of 8,000 daily tests by the end of April.
The government’s “expanded targeted testing” aims to test 1.5 to 2 percent of the country’s total population or about 1.6 to 2.2 million people.