Over two million Filipinos have been tested for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) according to National Action Plan Against COVID-19 Deputy Chief Implementer and Testing Czar Vince Dizon, reaching their goal before the month ends.

In a palace press briefing on Tuesday, Dizon noted that increasing the testing capacity has always been the goal of the National Task force Against COVID-19 and the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID).

However, he said that despite this achievement, more tests still need to be conducted. 

"Pero kulang pa din po iyan kailangan tuloy tuloy pa din po ang ating test lalo na sa mga areas na matataas ang kaso tulad ng Greater Metro Manila area (It's still not enough so we still have to continue testing especially in areas where cases are high like the Greater Metro Manila area)," he said.

Last July, Dizon said that the country is conducting up to 33,000 tests per day through 94 laboratories, getting over its initial goal for the month of July which is 30,000 tests.

He then mentioned two weeks ago that the Philippines now conducts the most number of COVID-19 tests compared in Southeast Asia, according to the figures from Our World in Data, an England-based data and research platform.

The graph from Our World in Data showed that the country has increased its number of people tested on a seven-day average to more than 30,000, topping Indonesia’s 12,777 tests, Malaysia’s 6,494 tests, Singapore’s 5,551 tests, Thailand’s 1,926 tests and Myanmar’s 1,126 tests as of end-July. Vietnam recorded a high of 10,906 tests.

“One of the major challenges we’ve had in the past months was testing. But now, we are able to aggressively conduct more tests with the 100 laboratories already accredited from only 1 lab in February,”  said Dizon.