Malacañang said Philippines is now among the countries with the best testing capacity for Covid-19.
This after the country’s 122 accredited laboratories nationwide were able to conduct 3.04 million tests on 2.9 million individuals–2.6 percent of the country’s 108.77 million population.
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said the country is now at par with other countries, which conducted expanded targeted mass testing, since the current standard for Covid-19 testing is three percent of the country’s overall population.
“We clearly have the best testing policy in the whole of Asia and probably in the whole world because we have exceeded three million [tests] and as a percentage of total population,” Roque said in an online press briefing on Tuesday.
Chief implementer of the government’s national policy on Covid-19 Carlito Galvez the country’s testing capacity is still expected to improve since their are currently 102 more laboratories applying for license to test Covid-19 samples.
Good grade
Roque said the country’s greatly improved testing capacity contributed to government’s successful efforts to contain the spread of infections six-months after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
He said the initiatives prevented the number of infections in the country to reach 3 million as predicted by medical experts.
As of Sept. 15, 2020, there are 269,407 confirmed Covid-19 cases nationwide.
Of the said cases, 207,352 already recovered from the disease. The other 57,392 are still recovering from the infection, while 4,663 already succumbed from it.
Roque also cited the country’s low mortality rate for Covid-infected patients, which is at 1.7 percent and still sufficient critical care capacity as proof of the government’s proper management of the pandemic.
“So all in all, I think we deserve a very good grade. I would give it a grade of 85 percent,” Roque said when asked his assessment on the government’s response to the pandemic.
Areas for improvement
Roque, however, noted that the government’s strategy against Covid-19 still needs some improvement particularly when it comes to contact tracing.
Contact tracing czar and Baguio Mayor Benjamin Magalong earlier said some local government units (LGU) are still unable to meet the benchmark for contact tracing.
Roque said they expect this will be addressed with the recently passage of the Bayanihan 2 law.
“We need to brush up po in our tracing and now that the Bayanihan 2 [law] is passed, we will have 5 billion allotted for [the hiring of] additional tracers,” Roque said.
Likewise, he said the government will also still have to build up additional isolation facilities for the people, who will test positive for Covid-19.
Galvez noted that “aggressive isolation” will be crucial for the government to continue containing the spread of infection.
“If we will not be able to isolate them, then we are just wasting money for testing and contact tracing. The decisive point in our strategy is how we can unearth the unseen enemy and isolate and prevent it from transmitting,” Galvez said.
Image credits: Bernard Testa
1 comment
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