MANILA, Philippines — As the Philippines continues to miss its ambitious target of conducting 30,000 tests daily for coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the government said the country’s testing capacity should be measured by its capability to test all those who need it.
The COVID-19 pandemic has so far sickened 30,682 people in the country since health authorities first detected a case in late January but the government is still struggling to increase its capacity to test more individuals.
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“The DOH has been consistent that an adequate testing capacity is not measured by achieving a target number or percentage of the population that could be tested; rather it is being able to make testing accessible to all those who need it,” President Rodrigo Duterte said in his latest report to Congress.
Initially, the government aimed to conduct 8,000 tests for COVID-19 per day by the end of April and failed. It was only able to conduct more than 8,000 tests on May 10.
The government then set a target of 30,000 coronavirus tests daily by the end of May—a goal it still fails to meet to this date.
Last month, the DOH found itself correcting presidential spokesperson Harry Roque’s claim that the government had already surpassed its end-May target of 30,000 tests daily. At the time, the actual capacity of accredited laboratories across the country was around 8,500 to 9,500 tests a day.
Duterte said in his report that the rated maximum capacity of all coronavirus testing laboratories in the Philippines is more than 42,000. But DOH figures showed an average of 11,574 tests per day have been conducted from June 15 to 21.
“The rated maximum daily testing capacity has not been reached as there are still problems encountered by the laboratories such as lack of other testing equipment and supplies materials (e.g. extraction kits and reagents) in the testing process and workers’ fatigue,” the president’s report read.
1.5% of the country’s population
Stressing it would be “physically impossible” to test everyone in the Philippines, Roque in May said the government is eyeing to test 1.5 to 2% of its almost 110 million population for coronavirus, similar with levels in South Korea and Taiwan that have put the transmission of the virus under control.
Last week, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the agency is aiming to test 1.5% of the population—some 1.63 million Filipinos—by end of July. To date, only 558,163 individuals have been so far tested for coronavirus in the country.
Under the current guidelines, healthcare workers and patients with severe or critical and mild symptoms, and the vulnerable populations are prioritized for reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction testing.
Currently, there are 63 licensed laboratories nationwide. — Gaea Katreena Cabico