After providing protective gear and other aid to medical frontliners, Vice President Leni Robredo said her office will procure locally developed test kits that can be used for mass testing for coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
Robredo’s office allocated P14 million of its current 2020 budget to buy test kits developed by scientists from the University of the Philippines-National Institutes of Health.
“Iyong na-develop na test kits ay ready na for distribution. Nakapila na kami. Uunahin lang iyong DOST (Department of Science and Technology). Kami na iyong susunod,” she said on her radio show, “BISErbisyong Leni.”
The test kits developed by local scientists can accommodate up to 120,000 tests, with priority given to DOST that will distribute 26,000 of those tests to various public and private hospitals.
The remaining 94,000 will be sold for P1,300 per test kit, much lower than its foreign counterpart which costs around P8,500 each.
These test kits will be sold commercially by Manila HealthTek Inc.
Robredo said her office can purchase 10,000 tests from its allotted budget for the COVID-19 test kits.
“Hopefully within the week, we will be able to get them for distribution. But we will still coordinate with the DoH (Department of Health), RITM (Research Institute for Tropical Medicine) for proper distribution,” she said.
Earlier, COVID-19 National Task Force (NTF) chief implementer Carlito Galvez, Jr. announced that the mass testing will be conducted starting on April 14, targeting 3,000 tests per day.
Galvez said that there are now nine accredited hospitals that can conduct the tests.
The vice president welcomed this as “good news,” citing the experience of other countries that conducted mass testing in response to COVID-19.
”It is definitely a step in the right direction,” Robredo said in a Facebook post. (Raymund F. Antonio)
