Hospitals’ group suggests rapid virus testing at home

The Philippine Hospital Association (PHA) has urged the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve more antigen kits to enable families to test for the novel coronavirus on their own and in their homes.

In a television interview on Thursday, PHA president Dr. Jaime Almora said allowing more people to buy and use rapid test devices could “empower” them to isolate more quickly.

Almora said people could be taught and managed by the DOH to collect their own specimen, as government and private hospitals remained overwhelmed with the number of people sick with COVID-19.

“When the hospital puts up a sign [saying it is] already full and they’re not admitting patients, that is an indication that they have been overwhelmed, that the cases [or] the enemy has the upper hand,” Almora said.

Almora, who earlier said that the “battle is lost,” said, “What we need to do now is to bring the battle to the doorstep of every household, every office, every workplace, [and] we need people to defend themselves.”

The government has received an initial allotment of 100,000 antigen kits as it targeted to increase testing in Metro Manila and other high-risk provinces.

Civil Defense chief and Undersecretary Ricardo Jalad on Thursday said the initial batch of the antigen devices from Abbott-Panbio had already been delivered but were “undergoing [technical inspection and acceptance] now prior to deployment by the DOH (Department of Health).”

The National Task Force (NTF) against COVID-19 aimed to deploy the antigen kits to hospitals and local governments to increase the current national daily testing capacity of 50,000 to 80,000.

The delivered kits were part of the 500,000 antigen kits, whose use the NTF approved last week in order to test more people exposed to or suspected to have the virus.

The government had allocated no more than P235 million from the Office of the Civil Defense budget for the antigen kits.