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Concepción pushes DOH to perform saliva tests
MANILA, Philippines – An adviser to President Duterte yesterday urged the Department of Health (DOH) to act immediately on the proposal to study the switch to saliva testing for COVID-19.
Presidential Advisor on Entrepreneurship Joey Concepción, speaking on the weekly virtual forum in Kapihan sa Manila Bay, said that testing saliva using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) produces fast and reliable results.
He said that it is also much cheaper and faster as the swabbing process can be skipped.
Concepción said her group is funding local research on the use of saliva in COVID-19 testing, as is being done in the United States.
“My estimate is that if the prevalence of the virus is less than five percent in areas or in barangays, the cost will be between 500 and 650 pesos per person in RT-PCR,” he said. “We are funding research using saliva for RT-PCR. That is another great advance; it’s being done right now in the United States. “
Concepción said the Philippine Red Cross is also beginning to do its own study on saliva testing.
“So Dr. Raymond Long, the principal investigator for the PSP, is doing this for our group. Hopefully that would even lower the cost because
we need swabs, we won’t need an instruction machine and it will be faster, ”he said.
Concepción said that they await the validation of the antigen, especially the new antigen that has come out, which is the saliva-based antigen kit. “The antigen is ideal for areas without a laboratory,” he said.
It revealed that Tessie Sy-Coson, vice president of SM Investments Corp., played a role in linking her group with AstraZeneca to explore its zero profit.
program for the COVID-19 vaccine of the British pharmaceutical company.
“And that’s how we get involved because we’ve been getting involved in all these (saliva) testing initiatives,” Concepción said of the teamwork between the government and the private sector in the country’s response to COVID-19.
“With AstraZeneca, what attracted us is the cost of the vaccine which is $ 5,” he said.
He added that the secretary of the vaccine czar, Carlito Gálvez Jr., and the DOH are working on a tripartite “mutual benefit” format of an agreement with the private sector and the pharmaceutical companies that provide the vaccine.
Yesterday, Philippine Red Cross President Senator Richard Gordon suggested that Research Reagents from the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) are commonly used in COVID-19 test kits so the country can make its own. test kits.
“My question is, why can’t DOST copy the reagents? We should be doing that. Copy the reagents and maybe we can produce our own (test kits) which are cheaper. Maybe test kits, swabs, maybe we can
produce that, ”Gordon said in an interview broadcast by ANC.
“I want you to investigate. Why can’t we do something simple like reagents? I mean we should be able to track the content of that, “he added, and said other countries have done well in developing theirs by copying reagents from other developed countries.
Singapore markets a portable test kit
Meanwhile, Singapore is now marketing a palm-sized portable genetic test kit that will detect the COVID-19 virus in minutes via nasal swabs or saliva samples.
According to Cell ID Pte. Ltd., a Singapore-incorporated medical technology company, the test kit called
Quiz PCR Biochip uses biotechnology to perform two tests on nasal swab or saliva samples.
The technology uses an application on a laptop to detect the virus outside of the lab, so it can be done “anytime, anywhere.”
The company said in a statement that “positive results are confirmed in as little as five minutes and negative results are returned in one hour.”
A QR code on the biochip also offers traceability that allows healthcare providers to quickly identify and electronically deliver test results to the person being tested.
“Quiz PCR Biochips are affordable single-use genetic tests that can detect COVID-19, anywhere, anytime,” said inventor Xander Sim, CTO and co-founder of Cell ID.
Two genetic tests can be performed simultaneously using the same or a different protocol: PCR tests or RT-LAMP assay.
Sim said that the RT-LAMP assay “fully meets the precision standard of 95 percent CI.”
Biochips are hot swappable, which means that test pairs can be run on demand without the wait time associated with batch processing.
The effectiveness of the biochips has been tested in Singapore in collaboration with local health agencies at two quarantine facilities (EXPO and a dormitory for foreign workers) between July and October 2020.
A third-party laboratory separately validated the effectiveness of the test in Switzerland this month. – Neil Jayson Servallos, Sheila Crisostomo
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