SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—On June 19, two multimillion-peso biomolecular laboratories—one here in the Subic Bay Freeport and another in the nearby Clark Freeport Zone—were unveiled without fanfare by the Philippine Red Cross (PRC), the stark simplicity of the occasion underscoring the urgent mission of the facilities: to save the sick and help heal the ailing economy.
Sen. Richard J. Gordon, who is chairman of the nongovernment organization, said the Subic and Clark laboratories were just the latest in a string of Covid-19 testing centers put up by the Red Cross. But they won’t be the last.
“We can do a total of 4,000 tests per day in the [Subic and Clark] facilities, which will enable us to run an overall total of 16,000 tests a day,” Gordon said last week.
He added that the PRC is putting up more laboratories to increase its overall capacity to 32,000 tests a day by the end of June to help step up the government’s mass testing program that targets the more vulnerable sectors of the population.
The reason is twofold, Gordon said: to separate the people who are sick from the people who are not, so they won’t contaminate; and to allow people to return to their jobs faster, thus reviving the economy.
“When people are tested and we know where they are, they can start working already. But without that, it’s going to be hard getting people back to getting an income of their own,” he pointed out.
“We do not want a system where people rely on the government—that is the worst thing that we can do to our country and it’s been happening for some time. Now we’re going to get out of it,” Gordon said.
Rising cases
That job of testing, isolating and treating appears daunting, as cases of Covid-19 infection continue to rise. As of June 24, the Department of Health has recorded a total of 32,295 Covid-19 infections in the country, of which 22,436 are active cases.
The day before, on June 23, new cases shot up to 1,150, the biggest single-day increase in infection that was recorded—some say following the relaxation of rules, as some areas eased down to modified enhanced community quarantine or general community quarantine.
Most of the positive cases are clustered in the National Capital Region, with a total of 16,277; Region VII (Central Visayas), with 6,419; Region IV-A (Calabarzon), 2,334; Region III (Central Luzon), 838; and Region XI (Davao Region), 479.
Meanwhile, the cities and provinces with the most cases are Cebu City, with 4,216; Quezon City, 2,957; City of Manila, 2,035; Cebu Province, 935; and Makati City, 899.
Covid-19 response
Secretary Vince Dizon, who was recently named Deputy Chief Implementer of the government’s Covid-19 response on top of his being president and CEO of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, had said the government intends to undertake focused testing on just 2 percent of the country’s population.
In a media briefing after the opening of the Red Cross laboratory in Subic, Dizon said the government’s testing program is gaining headway, as could be gleaned from the number of testing centers that have been established since the Covid-19 outbreak.
“Last February, there was only one testing center for Covid-19 in the country and that was the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine. Then in March we had less than 10, in April less than 15, and now we have 42 labs operating,” Dizon pointed out.
He said this number has increased the daily testing capacity nationwide to 50,000, with the Red Cross undertaking from 15,000 to 20,000 of the tests made each day.
“In the most challenging days and weeks, it was the Red Cross that really stepped up and took up the cudgels, especially in testing returning overseas Filipino workers [OFWs],” Dizon recounted.
“Since March, almost 60,000 OFWs have arrived. About 300,000 more will be arriving in the next three to four months. Now the Red Cross has tested 54,000 OFWs in just six weeks, and a lot of them have already returned to their respective provinces because their test results from the Red Cross came out fast,” he added.
Stepping in
As the country’s foremost humanitarian organization, the Philippine Red Cross has been a proactive player in the Philippine Covid-19 response.
When the virus outbreak was first reported in Wuhan, China, in January, its chairman Senator Gordon urged Philippine officials to monitor the situation and prepare in case the “mystery” disease spreads.
Gordon was also among the first to call for temporary, partial lockdowns in February in face of the spreading infection worldwide, and for the government to stockpile strategic medical supplies.
Then, PRC began filling the void in mass testing by establishing testing facilities in March at its national headquarters along Edsa and starting actual testing by mid-April.
By late April, Gordon reported that PRC testing centers “are picking up speed as more samples come in, although our machines are still not maximized” and that the Philippine Coast Guard and some local government units in Metro Manila have started sending more samples.
Upon opening the two testing centers that were both equipped with two polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machines, the Red Cross was able to test 12,622 unique individuals from April 16 to May 4.
PRC records also indicated that from an initial high of a little more than 700 tests daily due to the small number of samples they received, Red Cross testing centers soon recorded a dramatic increase in the output of the facilities: a total of 990 tests on May 4; 1,980 on May 5; and 2,136 on May 6.
“Testing is the key,” Gordon stressed then, “that’s why I call on the LGUs to test more people, because the more people are tested, the faster the enemy will be unmasked.”
Ramping up testing
Buoyed by its early success, PRC soon opened a third testing facility at the Port Area in Manila, thus coming up with a daily combined capacity of 12,000 tests.
It was then at this time that Red Cross was cited by Dizon as doing a huge chunk of the testing nationwide, and owning fully 45 percent of the 11,123 tests completed on May 14.
Figures released by the PRC indicated that its facilities completed increasingly larger volume of samples tested: 4,590 on May 14; 5,040 on May 15; 5,400 on May 16; and 6,030 on May 17.
The recently opened biomolecular laboratories in Subic and Clark are the first such facilities to be put up outside of Metro Manila. These are expected to boost PRC’s capacity to 16,000 tests per day, Gordon said, but more facilities are already being established as of this writing.
He said eight more testing centers will soon open in Batangas, Laguna, Mandaue City, Isabela, Cagayan de Oro City, Zamboanga City, Bacolod City and Surigao.
Red Cross will also add 10 more PCR machines at its laboratory in the Port Area to enable a total of 46,000 tests per day, Gordon added.
The task ahead
Even with targeted testing, where the most vulnerable sectors of the society were to be tested, the Philippine Red Cross still faces a seemingly impossible task.
Gordon noted that according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 13 percent of the population has to be tested so that the positivity rate of Covid-19 can be determined.
Given Metro Manila’s population of 13 million, Gordon said that Red Cross would be able to test the required number of about 1.7 million in about 50 days, given a capacity of 32,000 tests per day.
“For the whole country, if all laboratories are working at 46,000 tests per day, we can finish 13 percent in 305 days. Very ambitious, but we can make it happen,” Gordon said.
The expected arrival of some 300,000 OFWs who have been displaced worldwide by the Covid-19 pandemic is expected to complicate the task of targeted testing.
But Gordon said the Red Cross laboratories in Subic and Clark could play a major role in mitigating this problem, if only the Department of Transportation will open up the Subic Bay International Airport so that OFW flights could be diverted there to facilitate testing.
“We have an airport and a seaport here in Subic. So, some OFWs could be brought here where they can be tested by the Coast Guard and use the quarantine facility put up by SBMA Chairman Amy Eisma,” he said.
Gordon also pointed out that it would be easier for ships carrying returning Filipino seafarers to dock in Subic because of calmer waters. “Here members of the Philippine Coast Guard can easily go up the vessels to take swab samples, unlike in Manila Bay,” he said.
Gordon added that with the combined 4,000 test capacity of the Subic and Clark laboratories, testing the expected 300,000 OFWs can be completed in 75 days.
New prospects
Can Gordon do these tasks he set out to do? The government’s deputy chief implementer of Covid-19 response, for one, agrees that Gordon has the perfect plan for the returning OFWs.
“Subic is the ideal place for seafarers coming from cruise lines. Manila is already congested, so Subic is perfect for anchorage because of the bay. They can be tested by the Coast Guard while remaining on their ships,” Dizon said.
Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority Chairman and Administrator Wilma T. Eisma, who helped operationalize the Subic testing facility by putting up a swabbing center at the Freeport main gate, also believes Gordon can.
“I learned malasakit from Dick Gordon,” said Eisma, who was among the volunteers at the Subic agency when Gordon was chairman. “He has a genuine desire to serve the country, and politics takes a backseat for him.”
“I have worked long enough with him to know about his persistence—that what may seem impossible to others may only take a longer time for him to accomplish,” Eisma added.
Indeed, Gordon continues to step up. With the same foresight that manifested at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, he is now setting his sights on several molecular laboratories strategically placed in the country’s major tourism destinations.
These, he said, would ease the reopening of the local tourism industry in view of a warning from the United Nations World Tourism Organization that international tourism may decline by as much as 70 percent this year if countries around the world would gradually open their borders starting August.
To help put the local tourism industry on the rebound, Gordon said the PRC will open testing centers in Boracay, Bohol, Palawan and Siargao, first to test local workers and residents, and then enable said areas to advertise that they are cleared of infection and are now open to tourists.
The Philippine Red Cross response to the Covid-19 pandemic could go a long, long way.
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