Caloocan building own Covid-19 testing lab

The Caloocan City government is constructing a molecular laboratory at one of its major hospitals to boost the city’s mass testing capacity for the new coronavirus, Mayor Oscar Malapitan announced on Thursday.

The planned laboratory would be located at the Caloocan City North Medical Center compound in Camarin and capable of conducting reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests.

“If we have our own molecular laboratory, more residents will be able to undergo swab tests and it will be easier for the local government to determine those who are positive for COVID-19 so we can bring them to isolation centers,” Malapitan said in a statement.

The future facility would be the third COVID-19 lab to be built and operated by a local government in Metro Manila, after those set up in Marikina and Manila.

At present, a national government-run hospital in the city—the Dr. Jose N. Rodriguez Memorial Hospital and Sanitarium in Tala, North Caloocan—is licensed to conduct RT-PCR and cartridge-based PCR tests. As of Thursday, the city health department recorded 3,324 confirmed coronavirus cases in Caloocan, with 138 deaths and 1,706 recoveries. —Meg Adonis