MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Red Cross (PRC) on Wednesday distributed P3,500 financial aid and P2,000 worth of food packs to 210 patients in San Juan who recovered from the coronavirus disease, the city government said Wednesday.
In a statement, San Juan Mayor Francis Zamora said he is thankful for PRC’s help in providing for the financial assistance of recovered COVID-19 patients and free mass testing in the city.
“We benefited greatly from the free RT-PCR [reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction] tests that the Philippine Red Cross provided through PhilHealth [Philippine Health Insurance Corp.] Because we had targeted aggressive mass testing, we were able to test between 2,000 to 3,000 individuals per week in San Juan City,” Zamora said.
An initial 90 recovered COVID-19 patients already received their cash assistance from PRC in September, Zamora said. The organization chose 300 beneficiaries in San Juan City for the cash grant distribution.
As of Wednesday, San Juan has 3,085 total confirmed cases with 2,913 recoveries and 83 deaths.
Meanwhile, Zamora said PRC’s molecular laboratory would resume the aggressive mass testing in the city after the organization halted its government-funded coronavirus testing last Oct. 15 due to PhilHealth’s failure to pay its P1 billion worth of debt.
“The good news is that this Friday, we will be resuming our target aggressive mass testing here in San Juan City. With this, we hope to have zero active cases by December of this year,” he said.
On Tuesday, PRC revealed that it would continue its testing for coronavirus disease after PhilHealth made a partial payment of its debt valued at P500 million to PRC. [ac]