Chinese Embassy donates COVID-19 test kits to Philippines
MANILA, Philippines — The Chinese Embassy announced on Monday that donated test kits from China have arrived in the Philippines.
According to the embassy, the new test kits, which were jointly donated by Chinese Embassy in the Philippines and the China Mammoth Foundation, can yield results within three hours.
The country's lack of testing kits has, for many, added to the uncertainty over the COVID-19 outbreak.
Officials from the Philippine General Hospital have emphasized that early screening can help quell the spread of the virus.
But on Monday, March 9, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III admitted that supplies for testing were limited, which may mean an underreporting of cases.
READ: Early screening can quell COVID-19 spread — PGH
In an earlier text message, Duque told Philstar.com that patients were only tested "just three times" per day with “about 200 to 250 people” getting tested each day at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) where tests could take up to 48 hours.
"We feel the same as the Philippine people are going through difficult times. We will do our utmost to help," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said in a tweet.
The kits have not only been widely used in China's battle against the epidemic and proven to be quite effective, but also been exported to more than 50 countries including Japan, Thailand, Brunei, Egypt, Peru and UAE.
— ChineseEmbassyManila (@Chinaembmanila) March 16, 2020
READ: How the Department of Health processes potential COVID-19 cases
According to the country's Food and Drug Administration, no company thus far has submitted the necessary licenses to operate and certificates of product registration from national regulatory agencies, despite many companies coming out with supposed test kits of their own.
This meant that there were no COVID-19 test kits registered and made available to the public, they said in a statement.
Chinese Ambassador Huang Xilian has informed Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea that China was ready to extend more support if need be, they said.
The novel coronavirus originated in the city of Wuhan in the Hubei Province of China and has since been confirmed in 140 patients in the Philippines.
As of this writing, there are currently some 156,000 patients of the new virus around the globe. — Franco Luna with reports from Agence France-Presse
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