DOH: Govt unlikely to hit 30,000 daily testing target by May 30 | Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco
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DOH: Govt unlikely to hit 30,000 daily testing target by May 30
By Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco May 26, 2020 Facebook Twitter Pinterest WhatsApp Linkedin Email Print
The Department of Health (DOH) doubts government can meet its target to conduct 30,000 Covid tests per day by May 30.
Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque also took back his pronouncement on Monday that the government was able to exceed its goal of 30,000 tests in a day saying he was referring to “our national testing capacity, which is now at 32,000 per day.”
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire clarified that the 32,000 tests that Roque was claiming is the estimated maximum capacity of all licensed laboratories across the country.
“This (32,000) is just an estimate,based on the number of machines,number of HR [human resource] and the operating hours per laboratory,” Vergeire explained.
Vergeire also underscored the “factors” that may affect the operations of each laboratory that will render a low number of tests daily.
Last month, the government also set – but failed, to meet its initial goal of 8,000 tests per day by the end of April.
As for this month, Vergeire said, “[Our] Average of [the daily tests conducted] is 8,590 to 9,500 per day.”
“Our actual numbers are being reported daily thru our sit reps [situationer report] and other materials.The 32,000 is the estimated capacity sans all other factors that may affect operations of laboratories,” the DOH official said, adding that the 66 laboratories also mentioned by Roque include the 17 labs that are set to be licensed.
She reiterated that factors “may affect operations include availability of lab supplies in the market, health human resource issues, equipment and issues in infrastructure.”
She cited the incident in Bicol, a province that was hit by a typhoon recently, where the lab of the University of the Philippines- National Institutes of Health broke down, and some of the equipment of the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) were damaged due to leaks in the building after heavy rain.
Admitting that they are trying hard to attain the target that has been set, Vergeire said that the DOH has assigned specific teams to focus on labs which are on the stage 3 and 4 of the licensing process.
“So we can guide them and expedite their licensing in the next two weeks. We have identified 17 labs which is possible to be licensed in the next two weeks. Included here would be two labs from PRC which has a huge capacity for testing,” she said.
Likewise, in their existing labs, Vergeire said, they have provided automated extraction machines which can lessen time for processing of samples by four hours per run.
“And also we have added additional RT – PCR machines in some of the labs. Hopefully with these efforts we can be able to expand capacity and reach that target,” an optimistic Vergeire concluded.
Image Credits: Roy Domingo
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