Photo from the Quezon City Government Facebook page
MANILA, Philippines — A barangay hall in Quezon City will temporarily suspend operations starting this Friday, after 30 of its employees tested positive for the coronavirus disease in rapid antibody tests.
“Barangay South Triangle will be suspending its operations for three days starting June 5, 2020,” the barangay said in a Facebook post on Thursday.
Employees who tested positive to the virus were immediately quarantined and would undergo confirmatory swab tests or the COVID-19 RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) tests, according to the barangay.
“To reiterate: COVID-19 IgG rapid tests are only preliminary tests. A positive result on COVID-19 IgG rapid test does not necessarily mean that the individual is COVID-19 positive,” it added.
Rapid antibody tests require the blood sample of the patient and can only detect antibodies. Meanwhile, the more accurate reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests use actual swabs from patients taken from the nose or throat and determine the actual presence of the coronavirus.