By Warren Elijah E. Valdez
DAVAO CITY - In response to the national government’s call for all local government units (LGUs) to utilize all available resources to curve the threat of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), Tagum City is planning to establish a COVID-19 testing laboratory.
The testing facility will be established at a cost of P4 million, and will be a product of the joint efforts from the various LGUs of Davao del Norte, the Davao Regional Medical Center (DRMC), and the University of the Philippines (UP)- Mindanao.
The provincial government has already allocated P2 million, while the LGUs of Panabo City and Island Garden City of Samal (IGACOS) donated P3 million each to build Davao del Norte’s first COVID-19 testing facility, which will be put up inside the DRMC located in Barangay Apokon.
City Mayor Allan Rellon bared that the local government of Tagum will also be allotting a portion of budget from the Bayanihan We Heal As One Act grant downloaded by the national government to the city for the creation of the testing facility.
Rellon said that the establishment of a testing center will be a great help to improve the city’s response against COVID-19.
The facility will be equipped with a real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) detection system, designed to handle infectious materials as approved by the underlying guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Department of Health (DOH).
Currently, only Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) in Davao City has the capacity of a PCR detection as it is also the only recognized subnational referral center capable of testing for COVID-19 in Mindanao.
Meanwhile, Dr. Lyre Anni Murao, the director of the Philippine Genome Center (PGC) in UP-Mindanao said that the COVID-19 laboratory in Tagum City could be operational by June.