By Roy Mabasa China has launched its own molec­u­lar and di­ag­nos­tic pathol­ogy lab­o­ra­tory in San Fer­nando, Pam­panga, to in­crease the test­ing ca­pac­ity of the Philip­pines by 3,000 more daily and help mit­i­gate the spread of the coro­n­avirus dis­ease (COVID-19) in the coun­try. FACEBOOK/ MANILA BULLETIN Chi­nese Am­bas­sador to the Philip­pines Huang Xil­ian, Deputy Chief of Mis­sion Tan Qing Sheng, Health Sec­re­tary Fran­cisco Duque III, Cabi­net Sec­re­tary Karlo Alexei No­grales, and Asian Devel­op­ment Bank (ADB) Vice Pres­i­dent Ahmed Saeed graced the launch­ing of the lab­o­ra­tory at the Jose B. Lin­gad Memo­rial Re­gional Hos­pi­tal (JBLMRH) in San Fer­nando, Pam­panga, on Satur­day. The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment on Sun­day do­nated new batches of emer­gency med­i­cal sup­plies to the Philip­pines con­sist­ing of 100 ven­ti­la­tors, 150,000 test­ing kits, 70,000 med­i­cal pro­tec­tive suits, 70,000 N95 med­i­cal masks, 1.3 mil­lion sur­gi­cal mask, and 70,000 med­i­cal pro­tec­tive gog­gles to help the coun­try in its bat­tle against the coro­n­avirus dis­ease 2019 (COVID-19). Ac­cord­ing to the Chi­nese Em­bassy, the ADB is­sued a plan in March, 2020, to en­hance the ca­pa­bil­ity of mem­ber-states against the COVID19 pan­demic and in­tro­duced BGI Huo-Yan Lab­o­ra­tory So­lu­tion to the Philip­pines to in­crease its de­tec­tion ca­pac­ity of the COVID-19. The lab­o­ra­tory is de­signed to have the ca­pac­ity to test 3,000 per­sons per day. To date, Huo-Yan Lab has been in­tro­duced into more than 20 coun­tries around the world like Aus­tralia, Den­mark, Swe­den, France, Saudi Ara­bia, and United Arab Emi­rates. De­vel­oped by the Chi­nese BGI com­pany, Huo-Yan has played an im­por­tant role in the anti-pan­demic work in Wuhan where the virus was first ob­served in late 2019. With the in­creased test­ing and de­tec­tion ca­pac­ity, the Chi­nese lab­o­ra­tory will help the Philip­pines sig­nif­i­cantly pave the way for the grad­ual re­sump­tion of work and nor­mal life at the ear­li­est. “The Philip­pine gov­ern­ment and (its) peo­ple have gen­er­ously as­sisted China in our fight against the pan­demic. In re­turn, the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment and peo­ple have do­nated much-needed med­i­cal sup­plies worth tens of mil­lions of US dol­lars to the Philip­pines,” Tan, Deputy Chief of Mis­sion said. For­eign Af­fairs Sec­re­tary Teodoro Loc­sin Jr. per­son­ally re­ceived the 150,000 test­ing kits and 18,000 pieces of the dis­pos­able over­alls do­nated by Bei­jing from Chi­nese Am­bas­sador to Manila Huang Xil­ian. In a tweet, the DFA said the test­ing kits and the por­tion of the pro­tec­tive suits ar­rived on Satur­day while the re­main­ing over­alls are ex­pected to ar­rive tonight via a char­tered flight. The DFA im­me­di­ately handed over the lat­est do­na­tions from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment to Na­tional Task Force on COVID-19 Chief Im­ple­menter Car­l­ito Galvez. “I hope these sup­plies (will be) im­me­di­ately and ef­fi­ciently re­leased to those who need it. In short, I hope Gen­eral Galvez is in charge. Sole charge. He gets things done. He doesn’t talk it; he does it,” Loc­sin said in a so­cial me­dia post shortly af­ter the turn-over cer­e­mony. Af­ter the brief turn over, Loc­sin and Huang con­ducted a one-on-one meet­ing at the DFA of­fice in Pasay City.