By Jeffrey Damicog The government expressed hope on Monday that by May 30, it will be capable of conducting 30,000 tests per day for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and be at par with countries like South Korea. (JANSEN ROMERO / MANILA BULLETIN) “The goal is by May 15, we will have a capacity of about 15,000 tests per day, and by May 30, a capacity of 30,000 tests per day,” said Vince Dizon, deputy chief implementer of the National Police against COVID-19, during an interview over CNN Philippines on Monday, May 11. “The capacity of 30,000 per day already puts us at par with the best in the world. I am talking about countries like South Korea and other countries in the world,” said the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA). Dizon expressed confidence that the country will be able to achieve this before the end of the month. “Because it is not just the government that is doing this. It is a whole nation approach as advocated by the President,” Dizon said. “And now with the new labs, both the national government and the private sector, we are confident that we can get our goal of 30,000 by May 30,” he added. Dizon said that last month, the Philippine Red Cross added a testing capacity of 8,000 per day to the total national capacity. “Now the bigger challenge is to maximize that capacity and that requires a lot of efforts down to the LGU (local government unit) level,” he said. He lamented that “right now, our lab capacity is roughly at 12,000 but we’re doing about 7,300 tests per day.” “We are still far from the global best practices of above 10,000 tests per day,” he said.