BACOLOD City – This city, in partnership with the Department of Health (DOH), has established the country’s first hospital-based Level 3 testing laboratory to toughen its response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak.
Mayor Evelio Leonardia, Lone District Rep. Greg Gasataya, DOH-6 director Dr. Marlyn Convocar and Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital (CLMMRH) medical center chief Dr. Julius Drilon led the inauguration of the nearly P30-million facility on July 11.
It will be officially named the CLMMRH-Bacolod City Bio-safety Level 3 (BSL3) Molecular Laboratory.
The CLMMRH-Bacolod City Biolab can perform an initial 100 reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT -PCR) tests per day with a turnaround time of three days.
Convocar commended Bacolod for being the first local government unit to assist DOH in establishing one of the only three BSL3 Molecular Laboratories in the country and the first outside Metro Manila.
The other two are the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine University of the Philippines-National Institutes of Health.
The city government allocated P20 million, of which P14.7 million was used for the building and the rest the rest for a starter supply of consumables like test kits, extraction kits and reagents.
The CLMMRH, for its part, used about P15 million for the equipment and another P2 million also for consumables.
“This means we can do more testing and expect speedy release of results. Therefore, we can do contact-tracing as soon as possible to contain the virus,” Leonardia said. (With a report from PNA/PN)
