Health authorities must hasten the assessment on the saliva-based coronavirus testing to help augment the country's efforts to detect and treat people with the illness, Malacañang said Monday.

According to Presidential spokesman Harry Roque, saliva-based testing may help propel the country's testing efforts to attain 90,000 to 100,000 daily tests.

At present, the country uses the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, dubbed the gold standard in coronavirus testing, as well as rapid antigen tests to diagnose people infected with the disease.

"In addition to the use of antigen test, in the last IATF (Inter-Agency Task Force) meeting an appeal was already made to RITM (Research Institute for Tropical Medicine) to validate as quickly as possible the saliva PCR test, because saliva PCR test is half in cost at least to the normal PCR test," Roque said over CNN Philippines Monday, April 5

"And what we are aiming of course is to double the number of PCR test that we are conducting and because if it was half as expensive as the normal PCR, then we can do a 100,000 instead of the current 50,000 in addition to antigen test," he said.

Pending the approval of the saliva test protocols, Roque said the government task force has already authorized the use of 500,000 antigen testing kits to boost testing efforts. Three brands of antigen tests have already been validated by the RITM to complement our RT-PCR tests, Roque added.

The Department of Health earlier directed the RITM to complete its study on the validation of saliva as an alternative specimen for PCR test. A positive evaluation will reportedly serve as basis for the guidelines for the conduct of saliva specimen testing for other laboratories.

At present, the Philippine Red Cross offers saliva-based coronavirus testing after getting approval from the DOH.