Marikina employees to undergo mass tests before work resumption

MANILA, Philippines – The local government of Marikina has ordered employees in the private sector to submit themselves to COVID-19 testing before work resumes during the modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) all over Metro Manila.

Mayor Marcelino Teodoro said that mass testing among private companies would ensure the safety not only of the workers, but also of their families and other people in Marikina.

Almost 1,000 employees from three big companies in Marikina — one from the shoe industry, and others from the industrial sector — have now been tested using COVID-19 rapid testing kits.

“We want to ensure that our workers are safe from COVID-19, that’s why we are doing these testings before industrial and manufacturing factories, and our shoe industry starts operating again,” Teodoro, speaking in Tagalog said in a statement.

According to Teodoro, as much as they want to quickly start the resumption of work, they cannot do it without assurance that workplaces are COVID-19 free, as localized transmissions within the labor sector can be disastrous.

“We would ensure that workplaces and factories, our industrial settings are COVID-19 free,” Teodoro said.  “We already want to resume economic activities especially since we have stopped operating for almost two months because of the ECQ.”

After testing, those who would turn positive for coronavirus using the rapid kits would be subjected to another round of tests, this time using the RT-PCR kits.  The results would then be processed by the Marikina Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory.

Employees who would contract the disease would be brought to a quarantine facility for isolation and supportive treatment until they get better. Teodoro also said that they would be conducting random testing from time to time, to assure that workplaces remain COVID-19 free.

“We call this surveillance testing because even if quarantine regulations are lifted, the coronavirus would not disappear, because another thing that we are preparing for is a strong and resilient health system for the city of Marikina,” he explained.

“Whoever would test positive within the tests that we would do would be brought to a quarantine facility for the worker to be isolated and given medical treatment,” he said. “The most important thing is that the infected worker do not get to infect others, to avoid community transmissions.”

Marikina has been hailed as one of the most resilient cities in the country in terms of fighting the pandemic.  As of now, it has the slowest coronavirus transmissions in Metro Manila, considered as the epicenter of the outbreak.

Thanks to Marikina and its neighbor cities’ efforts — including quick lockdowns of areas with suspected COVID-19 cases, creation of quarantine sites, and the creation of the molecular laboratory, the east side of Manila appears to be doing well in the battle against the pandemic.

A recent online survey among 1,000 Metro Manila residents showed that Marikina and Teodoro registered 69 percent approval ratings, good for fourth out of 16 local government units in the National Capital Region.

At present, Marikina has 146 confirmed COVID-19 cases, 20 of which have died while 56 have recovered.  In the Philippines, the Department of Health said on Friday that there are now 12,091 cases with 806 deaths and 2,460 recoveries.

Worldwide, over 4.443 million persons have been infected, 302,412 of whom have died while 1.587 million have recovered.

EDV