Philippine government surpasses 1 million COVID-19 test target

CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga, Philippines – The government has surpassed its target of one million coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) tests, on its way to its target of 10 million tests by June next year, National Action Plan Against COVID-19 Deputy Chief Implementer Sec. Vince Dizon announced here yesterday.

“This is the target we set last month. Now, we haven’t even reached half of July, yet we have exceeded one million,” Dizon, also concurrent chair of the Bases Conversion Development Authority, said in a statement.

“But it’s still not enough, it’s just a start. It’s reflective of the challenges that we face in the first couple of months, and with the work that the Department of Health (DOH) has done in the past months, our testing capacity has increased and expanded. Because of this, we would like to thank the efforts of all the mayors in the National Capital Region,” he said in mixed English and Filipino.

Based on the DOH’s Situationer Report for COVID-19, a total of 1,039,191 tests have been processed at 66 licensed testing laboratories for realtime-polymerase chain reaction laboratories and 22 laboratories for GeneXpert tests.

Dizon noted that “as of July 12, there are 85 testing laboratories nationwide from only one in February, which will further ramp up the country’s testing capacity along with the government’s aggressive implementation of the Test, Trace, Isolate and Treat strategy.”

“The Philippines is also fast-approaching its target to conduct 30,000 tests per day by end of July, with 25,000 tests conducted daily as of July 9, from 561 tests conducted per day in March,” he also noted.

Dizon said that “based on this improvement, the country will be able to hit the target of conducting 10 million tests by June 2021.”

The DOH said the case doubling time (CDT) had significantly improved from 1.54 days in march 15 to 6.27 days on June 1, to 8.47 days on June 17. The CDT pertains to the period when the number of cases doubles.

The agency noted the mortality doubling time (MDT) had also expanded from 0.96 days in March 15, to 8.28 days on June 1 and 11.97 days on June 17. The MDT refers to the number of days it takes for the number of deaths to double.

The DOH added these data indicate that the country is “faring better” on CDT and MDT. Sheila Crisostomo