Senator Nancy Binay on Thursday urged the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) and the Department of Health (DOH) to conduct free COVID-19 testing in highly dense communities where cases of the Delta variant are predominant.
Binay said a free reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test would help contain community infections and suppress the spread of the virus.
“The goal is to test more, not to test all. Hindi naman natin hinihingi na i-test lahat (We’re not asking that everyone be tested). What we need is a rationalized, more targeted cluster approach to suppress the spread of the virus in the community level—not a shotgun approach," Binay pointed out.
Binay lamented the Philippines is still lagging in COVID-19 testing, and the government’s screening capacity remains poor. Despite the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), she noted, cases continue to rise.
“Why are we not testing enough? What happened to the target of 90k-100k tests daily? Given the country's low testing capacity, how can we be effective in isolating carriers and spreaders? The pandemic is worsening, and testing is very crucial especially in communities,” the senator pointed out.
In communities under hard lockdown and in critical zones where surges have been reported, she said both the DOH and the local government unit (LGU), can conduct a full community testing using RT-PCR tests.
Covid-19 cases continue to rise despite the enhanced community quarantine in the National Capital Region and other areas, and for the past week alone.
“Localized community testing, contact tracing and disease surveillance should automatically be part of the zoning containment strategy,” she said.
“If the Delta variant is already here in the country, RT-PCR tests should immediately be conducted,” she stressed.
“Sayang lang ang ilang milyong pisong binili ng gobyerno na antigen test kits dahil di pwedeng gamitin ang antigen sa genome sequencing lalo na sa bagong variants (The government wasted millions of pesos in buying antigen test kits that cannot be used in genome sequencing especially since there are new variants),” she pointed out.
Binay recalled that in March of this year, testing czar Vince Dizon said the government would ramp up its testing capacity from 57,000 to 90,000 daily. But so far, there are only about 50,000 tests per day recorded in the country.
"With the way we currently handle the COVID situation, our positivity rate is at 14 percent. At an average of 57,000 a day testing, that means the positivity rate will increase further, since a huge percentage of our population do not have access to testing,” the lawmaker lamented.