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Manila Bulletin devider Philippines devider Cotabato hospital given license to run COVID-19 testing lab

Cotabato hospital given license to run COVID-19 testing lab

Published May 22, 2020 12:00 am
By Warren Elijah Valdez DAVAO CITY - The Cotabato Regional and Medical Center (CRMC) can now run confirmatory tests for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) after it was accredited by the Department of Health (DOH) to perform rapid polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. Cotabato Regional and Medical Center (FACEBOOK / MANILA BULLETIN) Cotabato Regional and Medical Center
(FACEBOOK / MANILA BULLETIN) On Wednesday, May 20, the CRMC announced that they were already issued a license to operate as the first COVID-19 testing laboratory within the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). The hospital bared that they were already accredited by the DOH central office to perform the PCR tests using the GeneXpert machine, which is also a medical equipment used to test tuberculosis. CRMC chief of hospital Dr. Helen Yambao said on Wendesday that its Department of Pathology was able to successfully comply with all the requirements to acquire the license to become an “independent hospital-based COVID-19 testing sub-national laboratory.” The hospital was inspected by the DOH through its Health Facilities Services and Regulatory Bureau (HFSRB), together with the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM), personnel from World Health Organization (WHO), and the DOH-XII’s Regulation, Licensing, and Enforcement Division (RLED). It could be noted that the Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) in Davao City was previously the only medical facility in Mindanao recognized as a subnational reference that can test for COVID-19. “We are using Xpert Xpress SARS-CoV-2, an FDA-approved RT-PCR testing kit,” Yambao said, pointing out that it was an “acceptable confirmatory testing for SARS-CoV-2”. “And it can run the test in 45 minutes,” she added. The Bangsamoro government has allocated around P14.1 million for the procurement of the necessary medical and laboratory equipment that would run the COVID-19 diagnostic testing facility. On April 13, Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) Chief Minister Ahod Ebrahim and Yambao entered into a memorandum of agreement for the said budget allocation, allowing CRMC to utilize the fund for the procurement of required equipment for the COVID-19 testing laboratory. The CRMC chief also bared that they have also utilized a portion from the allocated budget to procure an additional bio-rad machine, which is also a conventional machine used for a PCR confirmatory test. With the COVID-19 testing laboratory, Yambao said the hospital will be accepting specimens especially from Region 12 and BARMM. “We are not going to accept specimens from walk-in patients to CRMC, or directly referred by LGUs, hospitals, and clinics. Only specimens from Suspect or Probable COVID-19 cases are accepted, and priority testing will be done to those critical cases and repeat tests for monitoring of COVID-19 positive cases,” she added. The laboratory will be accepting specimens from the Regional Epidemiology Surveillance Unit (RESU) of the DOH-12 and the Ministry of Health (MOH) – BARMM, only from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Meanwhile, Ebrahim said that the accreditation of the CRMC as sub-national testing laboratory “will greatly help the Bangsamoro and Region XII” in adopting the “detect, isolate, treat, and reintegrate” the national strategy in fighting the disease.
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