ILOILO City – Three weeks after Western Visayas recorded its first case of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the Department of Health (DOH) announced it was ready to conduct mass testing in the region, but “at risk” people would be prioritized.
Who are these people?
These are persons with the following:
* severe acute respiratory infection (SARI)
* those with influenza-like illness (ILI) who have contact with probable COVID-19 case
* those with fever, cough and other signs and symptoms of COVID-19 especially if 60 years old or older, or if a woman in high-risk pregnancy
* healthcare workers
Specimens from these people would be analyzed at the Western Visayas Medical Center (WVMC) in Mandurriao district here.
On April 8, or 19 days after confirming Region 6 first COVID-19 patient (a man from Bacolod City who had since recovered), DOH said its mass testing would commence “in a few weeks.”
Director Marlyn Convocar gave no exact date.
In this city, however, Mayor Jerry Treñas announced that the mass testing would start today, April 13.
As of yesterday, April 12, Iloilo City had five confirmed COVID-19 cases. A 44-year-old male from La Paz district was the latest addition – an overseas Filipino worker.
“Our medical technologists are preparing to go on mass testing starting Monday,” Treñas announced in the city government’s official Facebook page on Saturday, April 11.
“They are identifying the persons to be tested,” according to Treñas.
He wanted to prioritize persons under monitoring and persons under investigation, as well as healthcare frontliners such as doctors and nurses, especially those who have close contact with COVID-19 patients.
“We will try to have (an initial of) 100 since we only have six medical technologists,” said Treñas.
For her part, Convocar announced that the WVMC testing laboratory would be reinforced with addition Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) machines and additional medical technologists for the mass testing.
Currently, the WVMC testing laboratory can process between120 to 200 specimens each day, said Concovar.
As of yesterday, Western Visayas had 40 confirmed COVID-19 cases, six of whom recovered while seven died.
According to DOH-6, on April 11 the WVMC testing laboratory was able to release 52 test results; 51 of these were negative for COVID-19.
The lone positive test result was a 44-year-old male from La Paz district here. As this was being written, this region’s Patient No. 40 was confined in a hospital.
Mayor Treñas had been pushing for additional testing machines at WVMC so the latter can analyze more specimens.
He also wants more accredited medical technologists to perform the test.
Treñas said he will also push for the accreditation of West Visayas State University Medical Center (WVSU-MC) in La Paz district as additional COVID-19 testing center in Region 6.
“We want mass testing. However, we do not have that capacity. Kinanglan we will have to push for more PCR machines and more accredited med techs. The more we have them, the more testing we can do,” Treñas explained.
Treñas lamented that although Region 6 already has test kits – at least 5,000 – WVMC can handle not so many specimens.
The test kits came from the DOH central office. Each test kit can test 22 specimens for a total of 110,000 for the whole region.
Aside from these, the Iloilo City Government with the help of the business sector also purchased 2,700 test kits from South Korea worth P5.5 million.
It has also placed orders for test kits developed by the University of the Philippines.
If the WVSU-MC laboratory is accredited for COVID-19 testing, it and WVMC both could process more or less 500 specimens a day, said Treñas./PN
