MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines cannot afford to test every Filipino for COVID-19, Malacañang admitted Tuesday, adding that the government will instead find ways to expand the country’s testing capacity.
“If we can afford it, why not? But the reality is, hindi natin maa-afford ang testing sa lahat ng 110 million Filipinos. Pero gagawa po ng hakbang ang ating gobyerno para mas maparami ang testing natin,” Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said in a televised press briefing.
(If we can afford it, why not? But the reality is, we cannot afford testing for all 110 million Filipinos. However, our government will take steps to increase our testing.)
In a meeting aired Tuesday morning, President Rodrigo Duterte asked Health Secretary Francisco Duque III if mass testing of all Filipinos is possible.
Duque replied: “Wala pong bansa ang nakakagawa nito kahit na po ang pinakamayaman katulad ng United States of America.“
(No country can do this, not even the richest ones like the United States of America.)
But the Health chief noted that the Philippines’ testing capacity has increased and is now capable of conducting 20,000 to 23,000 actual tests per day.
He added that the target now is to test 10 million Filipinos by 2021.
Roque noted that the government is now exploring the idea of pooled COVID-19 testing to further maximize the testing capacity of all licensed laboratories.
In pooled testing, swab samples of multiple individuals are put into a single reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test.
If a positive result comes from a single batch of pooled tests, further individual assessments will be made. Meanwhile, if the swab tests come back negative, then individual testing will no longer be needed.
“At iyan na po ang hakbang na ginagawa ng gobyerno dahil alam natin na kapag na-test at nahanap natin kung sino ang mayroong COVID-19, pupuwede na silang i-isolate nang hindi na makahawa,” Roque said.
(And that is the step that the government is taking because we know that when we test and find out who has COVID-19, they can be isolated without infecting more people.)