Two lawmakers on Monday, July 26 vowed to pursue a legislation that would strengthen the capacity of the country's lone genome center to help detect new coronavirus (COVID-19) variants and improve the government's response capabilities during a pandemic.
Senator Sonny Angara, who earlier filed Senate Resolution No. 759, to inquire about the current state of COVID-19 biosurveillance and genome sequencing in the Philippines, stressed the importance of decentralizing the function of the Philippine Genome Center to speed up the process of detecting new COVID variants in the future.
"Testing will still be important, tracing will still be important, but we shouldn't forget the genome sequencing," Angara said in an interview on ANC's Headstart.
"Because right now, we only have one right now--the Philippine Genome Center doing it. If we are looking for new variants going forward, which is a possibility, we would like to decentralize that," he added.
Angara said decentralizing the PGC would help scientists and other experts determine emerging variants faster.
"So, we can have something maybe in the Visayas, have something in Mindanao, so you don't have to keep sending samples over (here) and by the time the data gets back to you, it's no longer timely data," he said.
Albay 2nd District Representative Joey Salceda agreed with Angara, saying he too believes there is a necessity for the PGC to branch out to other regions of the country.
"I'd like to pick up from Sen. Angara. I will try to file a bill also decentralizing the genome center," Salceda said in the same interview.
"I think that is a brilliant idea actually since this will not be the last pandemic," the solon said.
The government earlier employed tighter restrictions in Metro Manila, Ilocos, Davao as cases of the Delta variant in these places surged.
As of July 24, the Department of Health (DOH) announced it has logged 1,773 Alpha variant cases, 2,019 Beta cases, 119 Delta cases and two Gamma variant cases.