Virus testing capacity is PH ‘weakness’ in fight vs COVID-19, says Duque

MANILA, Philippines — Health Secretary Francisco Duque III admitted on Tuesday that the Philippines’ testing capacity in view of the coronavirus pandemic is the “number one weakness” in the country’s health system.

Duque said this during the Senate health committee hearing where bills seeking to improve the bed capacity of the government hospitals, address the lack of quarantine facilities, sub-national laboratories and to strengthen the country’s disease surveillance and epidemiologic investigation system, among others, are being tackled.

“Ang pinakamaliwanag na puwang o kakulangan po na atin pong natuklasan bunsod ng COVID-19 pandemic ay ang atin pong mga testing facilities, yan po ang talagang number one weakness po sa kasalukuyang sistemang pangkalusugan,” Duque told the Senate panel when asked on the gaps of the government’s response to the health crisis.

(The clearest gap to the government’s COVID-19 response is our testing facilities, that is really the number one weakness in our current health system).

The health chief added that there is a need to increase the number of sub-national laboratories to ramp up the country’s testing capacity.

“Sa testing natin ay aminado po tayo na iyan po ang isa sa pinakamalaking limitasyon po ng kasalukuyang sistema pero ginagawa po ng gobyerno, ng atin pong DOH (Department of Health), lalung-lalo na ang paunlarin ang bilang ng atin pong sub-national laboratories at ang mga pribadong mga laboratoryo na nagko-compliment po sa ating hangarin na ma-expand at ma-ramp up ang ating testing capacity,” he added.

(We admit that our testing is the greatest limitation of our current system but the government, the DOH, are doing everything to improve the number of our sub-national laboratories and private laboratories that would compliment our goal of expanding our testing capacity).

The government has been ramping up its COVID-19 testing capacity by accrediting more laboratories that are capable of detecting the novel coronavirus or SARS-CoV-2 which causes COVID-19.

The Philippines has so far tested over 300,000 individuals, according to the DOH’s COVID-19 tracker.

The DOH earlier set the target of being able to conduct 30,000 tests per day by the end of May. The government’s “expanded targeted testing” aims to test 1.5 to 2 percent of the country’s total population or about 1.6 to 2.2 million people.

Quarantine facilities

The health chief also pointed to the country’s lack of quarantine facilities, which he said was addressed by the government by setting up temporary treatment and monitoring centers.

To date, Philippine health officials have so far confirmed 14,319 COVID-19 cases in the country. Of the number, 3,323 have recovered while 873 have died.

JPV