DOH asks COVID-19 testing centers to stay open during Holy Week
MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health appealed to coronavirus testing laboratories to continue their operations during the Holy Week as the Philippines faces a surge in coronavirus cases.
In a briefing Wednesday, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the agency has issued a memorandum to its regional offices to ensure “there is continuity of operations” this Holy Week.
“We implore to all of laboratories: please do not close your laboratories. We need to be open so we can have a continuous monitoring of additional cases,” Vergeire said in Filipino.
Currently, there are 239 licensed testing centers for COVID-19 across the country.
The plea comes as the government struggles to curb a surge that has taken the country’s COVID-19 caseload to more than 740,000, of which 16.8% are active cases.
Authorities still have no plans to carry out mass testing even as cases pile up at an alarming. Vergeire earlier said there is no country capable of testing all of its citizens but mass testing does not mean screening the entire population for COVID-19.
Instead, the government is conducting “risk-based” testing, where local government do house-to-house checks to identify those who manifest symptoms. They will be tested, and isolated if found positive.
To date, 9.5 million people have been tested since the pandemic began last year.
The department said it would include antigen test results in the Metro Manila, Bulacan, Rizal, Laguna and Cavite—dubbed as “NCR Plus”—in the country’s overall count of infections. Previously, only results from RT-PCR tests were included in the tally.
The use of antigen tests is allowed in areas where there is a high prevalence of cases.
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