More hospitals joining mass testing drive

MANILA, Philippines — Six hospitals on Saturday joined the private sector initiative to determine the extent of coronavirus infections in the country, signing an agreement with Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion to boost their capacity for polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based testing.

The new partner hospitals are Central Visayas Center for Health Development in Cebu, Dr. Jose Natalio Rodriguez Memorial Medical Center in Caloocan, Philippine Children’s Medical Center (PCMC) in Quezon City, University of Perpetual Help Delta in Las Piñas, Quirino Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City and Zamboanga City Medical Center.

Concepcion got the hospitals onboard in his capacity as founder of business advocacy group Go Negosyo. The partnership with the hospitals is under Go Negosyo’s Project Ark (Antibody Rapid test Kits), a private-sector initiative led by Concepcion that is aimed at pushing some 30,000 tests per day.

Experience

Project ARK has so far procured more than 1 million rapid test kits for 177 partner companies.

Former Health Secretary and now Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin, who is also part of the project, said its aim is to decongest the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine and reduce the cost of testing for the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

Garin said the partner hospitals were chosen based on their location as well as their experience with the coronavirus disease, among other factors.

“Because COVID-19 apparently is lurking in bodies of patients with comorbidities, we find it proper to put up a laboratory in PCMC to test other patients in the hospitals nearby,” said Garin, citing one of the hospitals.

“[The PCMC] is also critically situated in the center of Quezon City where the social welfare department and other government agencies are located, with employees who are also front-liners,” she added.

Virus update

On Saturday, the Department of Health said the number of COVID-19 cases across the country reached 10,610 as 147 new cases were recorded.

The majority of the new cases, or 123, are from Metro Manila.

There are 108 more recovered patients, raising the total to 1,842.

The death toll, however, increased to 704 as eight more patients succumbed to COVID-19.

Health-care workers still account for 1 out of 5 cases as there are now 1,968 medical front-liners who tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes COVID-19. At least a quarter of them, or 508, have recovered while 34 have died.

Vaccination

The Philippine Foundation for Vaccination (PFV) urged the government to think of safeguards to ensure that the rollout of future COVID-19 vaccines would not be meet with strong resistance from the public.

The DOH earlier attributed the decline in the country’s vaccination coverage to the controversy surrounding the dengue vaccine Dengvaxia.

The department was forced to stop its antidengue inoculation program in 2017 after Dengvaxia’s manufacturer, Sanofi Pasteur, disclosed that it caused severe dengue among patients with no previous exposure to the dengue virus.

With the subsequent drop in vaccination coverage, the country saw the emergence last year of vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles and polio.

—REPORTS FROM MARIEJO S. RAMOS AND JOVIC YEE