DOH: Daily testing capacity still at 8K-9K

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THE Department of Health yesterday said the country’s daily testing capacity for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) remains at less than 10,000 samples.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the actual testing being done by the 49 accredited laboratories across the country is averaging somewhere between 8,000 to 9,000 daily.

“When it comes to the actual testing capacity, we haven’t reached our target,” she said.

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The DOH had targeted a testing rate of 30,000 as day by the end of May.

Last week, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the country has surpassed the target of 30,000 testing capacity but that it includes the potential testing capacity of all licensed laboratories in the country.

And according to Vergeire, Roque was not wrong about the 30,000- mark.

“The actual capacity, that is what we can do for now, what we are doing right now. Our rated capacity, that’s the capacity sans any other obstacles or any operational issues,” she said.

“We have a lot of issues, so this 32,000 that is the rated capacity, once we factor the variables of operational issues, the number will go down,” added Vergeire.

The DOH has repeatedly said that increasing the country’s testing capacity will enable health authorities to immediately isolate people with COVID-19.

Vergeire attributed the DOH’s continued failure to meet the target to operational issues hounding the laboratories, including problems in the supply chain.

“Our (laboratory) supplies are still erratic. We need to redistribute every now and then. Hopefully, we can address these operational problems in the coming days,” she said. “We really are having this challenge with our supplies in our laboratories.”

Aside from problems in the supply chain, she said other factors are resignation of the laboratories’ personnel, or their having to go under quarantine, as well as equipment suddenly conking out.

“There are really different operational issues that we encounter, these unforeseen events,” said Vergeire.

Given the operational issues faced by the laboratories, Vergeire said the backlog in testing has also swollen to over 1,000 once again.

She said they have brought down the testing backlog to over 500 over the weekend.

“We have a total of 1,691 backlogs as of 6 p.m. yesterday (Monday),” she said.

President Duterte, in his 10th report to Congress, said that as of May 27, the government has accredited 47 laboratories and 315,363 tests have been conducted on 289,732 individuals nationwide.

The President said government has bought P1.6 billion worth of PCR testing kits along with 6.1062 million personal protective equipment (PPE) worth P12.1 billion, and 10 automated nucleic acid extraction machines worth P400 million.

Duterte also reported that the Department of Science and Technology has started the mass production of reusable face masks at the rate of 10,000 masks a week, with a goal to increase to 50,000 masks weekly by the end of June.

The target is to produce 500,000 face masks, half of which to be donated to frontline government workers while the rest will be contributed to the government’s inventory of masks. — With Jocelyn Montemayor

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