Davao Regional Medical Center in Tagum to start COVID-19 testing
By Antonio Colina IV
DAVAO CITY – The Davao Regional Medical Center (DRMC), the only tertiary government hospital in the province of Davao del Norte, has been given the go signal to perform independent testing for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
The Department of Health (DOH)-Davao released a copy of the certification from Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) and a license to operate from the DOH-Health Facilities and Services Regulatory Bureau on Saturday.
The agency said the new COVID-19 testing laboratory, the second of its kind in the region, will serve as a testing center to increase the capacity to detect infected individuals in the region.
Since March this year, the Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) in Davao City has been the only testing center in the region, which also processes samples from other provinces of Mindanao.
DOH-Davao added that this new development would ease the difficulty in sending swabs and samples for COVID-19 testing to RITM in Manila and SPMC, and would improve its efficiency in releasing test results.
The DRMC will be using rapid polymerase chain reaction (PCR) following the World Health Organization (WHO) standards.