Health experts call for aggressive Covid-19 tests after detection of UK variant

MANILA, Philippines — Health experts are calling for a more aggressive Covid-19 testing to reduce transmission of the virus, following the detection in the Philippines of a more infectious Covid-19 variant that was first reported in the United Kingdom.

During the Kapihan sa Manila Bay media forum on Wednesday, pathologist and immunogenetics expert Dr. Emilio Villanueva III noted that the virus variant “can spread more easily from person to person.” He said the need to test, isolate and treat has become more urgent and imperative considering this trait of the new variant.

“Vaccines may not arrive in the Philippines as quickly as we hoped. Thus, we must test faster. We must test now,” Villanueva said.

Cornell University-trained biomedical engineer Thomas Navasero, chairman and CEO of LabX Corp., meanwhile noted that only the Philippine Genome Center and the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine have the capacity to conduct genetic sequencing to spot differences between the original variant and the UK variant of the virus at the DNA level.

But regardless of the Covid-19 variant, Villanueva and Navasero said that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the disease can be detected by both antigens and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests.

Navasero pointed out that there are accurate, faster, and more affordable antigen tests in the Philippines, for example, the Sofia 2, FINA, and AgILA antigen tests that all use Fluorescent Immunoassay technology.

According to Navasero, Sofia 2 was the first rapid point-of-care antigen test approved for emergency use by the United States Federal Drug Administration in May last year. It was also validated by the Department of Health based on Memorandum Order No. 0468.

“Sofia 2, FINA, and AgILA antigen tests all boast of near-perfect sensitivity at nearly half the price of RT-PCR tests. All have 100% specificity and not prone to human error since a fluorescent analyzer machine reads the results using lasers,” he explained.

He added that FINA and AgILA tests can also show a person’s numerical viral load, while Sofia 2 uses color codes to indicate mild, moderate, or severe infections. AgILA can likewise test up to 120 patients an hour using a single fluorescent analyzer.

The Department of Health (DOH) earlier said that the 29-year-old Filipino patient who tested positive for the B117 SARS-CoV-2 variant flew from the United Arab Emirates and arrived in the Philippines last January 7.

The DOH said on Wednesday that 11 individuals who came in contact with the patient have tested positive for the virus, among them his mother and girlfriend. Their specimen will undergo genome sequencing to determine if they were infected with the new variant of the virus.

/MUF