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CITY OF SAN PEDRO – The province of Cavite will increase its local testing capacity after the Department of Health (DOH) approved the use of a university molecular laboratory in the province to detect the coronavirus.
DOH and the Tropical Medicine Research Institute (RITM), the country’s main testing center, issued the certification on May 8 for the De La Salle Institute of Health and Medical Sciences in the city of Dasmariñas to conduct independent tests.
It was the first government-accredited sub-national laboratory in South Luzon seen to help free RITM from most of the sample samples, at least those from Cavite.
Since the local outbreak, the provinces of the Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Quezon (CALABARZON) region have submitted samples of samples collected from their residents to RITM.
Haydee Sy, director of institutional communications for De La Salle, said that with the laboratory’s current setup, three polymerase chain reactions (PCR) and a Natch CS extraction machine that automates the testing process, Cavite can now analyze up to 1,100 samples in one day.
Over the past month, the De La Salle lab began taking samples of suspected or probable cases in the province, though only for the purpose of obtaining DOH certification.
“We will just finish those (which are already in the lab) and after that, we can start with the specific mass tests,” Sy said in a phone interview Sunday.
Cavite Governor Juanito Victor Remulla said the order for the mass tests would start with health workers and frontline doctors.
After which, Sy said they would evaluate the people involved in relief missions, the staff who run the border checkpoints, and then factory workers and market vendors, as well as the people in their homes.
The DOH said that as of May 9, 1,071 people in CALABARZON had contracted the disease, of which 121 died and 304 recovered.
In Cavite alone, 218 people were infected with the virus, of which 25 had died.
However, local health officials doubted the actual score of the virus infection given the lack of massive evidence on the ground, with many suspected or probable cases dying without being tested.
For more news on the new coronavirus, click here.
What you need to know about the coronavirus.
For more information on COVID-19, call the DOH hotline: (02) 86517800 local 1149/1150.
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