Quezon City government partners with more testing labs

MANILA, Philippines — The Quezon City government has partnered with more laboratories to speed up the processing and release of the results of community-based testing for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

The Chinese General Hospital and Philippine Genome Center of the University of the Philippines Diliman have started processing swabs collected from suspected COVID-19 carriers, according to Joseph Juico, project manager of the city’s community-based testing.

Juico said the laboratories are able to process up to 50 swabs each per day.

The local government has partnered with St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City and Singapore Diagnostics to conduct COVID-19 testing.

The city also has an existing partnership with the Philippine Red Cross, which processes swab samples collected from the residents.

As of Monday, the city has collected 5,320 swabs through community-based testing program.

A total of 1,558 test results have been released, which yielded 199 positive and 1,359 negative.

Juico said most of the pending tests are those sent to government facilities such as the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine and Lung Center of the Philippines.