Testing has always been a priority of the government’s response against COVID-19, with President Rodrigo Duterte emphasizing anew the importance of aggressive and accessible testing to prevent the spread of the disease, the national government’s COVID-19 response implementers said Wednesday.
They also called on PhilHealth to ensure free access to RT-PCR tests for those covered under the expanded testing guidelines.
“Testing has been at the core of our National Action Plan (NAP) Against COVID-19 with the government’s Prevent-Detect-Isolate-Treat-Reintegrate (PDITR) strategy,” NAP Chief Implementer Carlito G. Galvez, Jr. said.
"From only one licensed COVID-19 testing facility in February, we now have 187 across the country and counting. We have also put a price cap on RT-PCR tests. Testing allowed us to save lives," Galvez added.
The Chief Implementer further stressed that testing, alongside contact tracing, isolation, and treatment measures, allowed the government to control COVID-19 cases.
"Testing allowed us to effectively conduct active case finding and surveillance. With the aggressive testing, we were able to isolate and treat positive patients, and bring down the level of transmission. Metro Manila for example is now down to 5% of active cases, due to our continuous mitigation efforts," Galvez said.
NAP Deputy Chief Implementer and Testing Czar Sec. Vince Dizon noted that under Department of Health (DOH) memorandum 0258-A, testing facilities shall utilize the appropriate PhilHealth benefit for those covered under the expanded testing guidelines.
“Our aggressive and expanded targeted testing has been effective in containing the transmission of COVID-19, especially in dense communities. We thank the President for his continuous support for the IATF and NTF’s response strategy,” Dizon said.
The memorandum covers individuals who are asymptomatic and those with symptoms, contact-traced individuals, health care workers, returning overseas Filipino workers, locally stranded individuals, frontliners in the response against COVID-19, and those who live or work in special concern areas.
It also covers other vulnerable patients, such as pregnant women, dialysis patients, and those who are immunocompromised, among others, as well as frontliners in tourist zones, workers and employees of manufacturing companies and public service providers registered in economic zones located in special concern areas.
Frontline and economic priority workers in different sectors, including transport and logistics, food retail, financial services, market vendors, construction, and media are also covered by the DOH memorandum. RT-PCR testing for those covered under the memorandum are free of charge and covered by PhilHealth.
As of December 7, more than 6 million RT-PCR tests have been conducted, with daily tests averaging 35,000.
Recent data also shows almost 5.7 million individuals have been tested. Latest numbers from Our World in Data shows the Philippines surpassing the cumulative number of tests conducted by Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam.
December 09, 2020