COVID-19 test ‘fixers’ prey on stranded passengers in Batangas port
TEMPORARY SHELTER People stranded in Metro Manila stay in tents put up at Rizal Memorial Sports Complex as they await clearance to return home to their respective provinces through the government’s “Hatid Tulong” program. —EDWIN BACASMAS
Some enterprising people were offering rapid tests to detect the virus causing the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) to stranded passengers in the port of Batangas City as they rush to get home to Mindoro Island and provinces in the Visayas, a local official said.
Although aware of such scheme, the Department of Health (DOH) cannot simply stop these people, especially if they are from private and licensed laboratories, said Ramonito Martin, commander of the COVID Incident Management Team in Mimaropa (Mindoro, Marinduque, Romblon and Palawan) region.
Oriental Mindoro Gov. Humerlito Dolor said “bookers” or fixers near the Batangas seaport, where Mindoro and Visayas-bound passengers embark, charge P10,000 for every RT-PCR (reversed transcription-polymerase chain reaction) test, about twice the cost of the standard swab test offered by the Philippine Red Cross and other institutions.
Shut anew
Some local governments, like Oriental Mindoro, even offer the tests free in the provincial hospital.
A negative RT-PCR test result is required of residents and overseas workers returning to Oriental Mindoro, which shut its borders anew on July 18 following a surge of infection.
The temporary ban covers the “authorized persons outside residence,” which generally have a free pass to travel, after a National Bureau of Investigation officer infected seven people during a brief stay in the province on July 17.
“For 50 days, we were COVID-free (no new case, until) July 8 when 21 LSIs (locally stranded individuals) and OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) arrived,” Dolor said in a phone interview.
Supply delay
He said the cheaper antibody test kits were not reliable due to “false negative or false positive” results.
As of July 29, there were 27 active cases, among them Dolor’s brother, provincial administrator Hubbert Christopher.
Some 68 Mindoro residents, who could not afford the expensive swab test, were stranded in Batangas City over the past weeks after the DOH ran out of “cartridges,” a laboratory device needed to process the specimen in the GeneXpert automated machines.
Public hospitals since May have been using the GeneXpert, the “reconfigured” tuberculosis-detection machines to test for COVID-19.
Dolor said the provincial government had been trying to buy its own supply of cartridges to avoid delays in testing and people’s movement, but was told that the DOH was procuring these solely from a Singapore-based company.
“(GeneXpert) works like a closed-system, meaning it works only with that particular cartridge,” Martin said.
On Wednesday, the local government of Oriental Mindoro fetched its stranded residents from Batangas City after the DOH promised to deliver a fresh supply of cartridges and resume free testing at provincial hospitals this week.
