EO to set price cap on swab tests

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) is checking with laboratories to determine an acceptable price range for COVID-19 tests, even as it awaits Malacañang’s issuance possibly next week of an executive order requiring a price cap on such procedure.

This was according to Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire, who explained in a radio interview that there is no law regulating the cost of COVID-19 diagnostic methods and that the DOH simply has no power to set price ceilings.

Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) or swab tests, considered more accurate than the rapid test, usually cost from P4,000 to P12,000.

Meanwhile, the DOH reported that confirmed cases of COVID-19 nationwide have soared to 301,256 with the addition of 2,747 new cases. Ninety percent or 2,471 of the newly reported cases occurred in the past 14 days.

Metro Manila accounted for most or 39 percent of the newly recorded cases in the past weeks, followed by CALABARZON with 17 percent and Western Visayas with nine percent.

DOH recorded 787 recoveries, bringing to 232,906 the total number of patients who survived the infection.

COVID-related deaths reached 5,284 with the inclusion of 88 new fatalities, 70 percent or 62 of which occurred in September while the rest happened between April and August.

Forty-one percent or 36 of the newly recorded deaths came from Metro Manila, 17 percent from CALABARZON and seven percent from Western Visayas and SOCCSKARGEN.

There were 852 duplicates that were removed from the total case count. Of these, 259 were recovered cases.

Twenty one cases previously tagged as recovered were reclassified as deaths after final validation.