By Minerva BC Newman CEBU CITY — The national government, through Deputy Chief Implementer or coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) response initiatives Vince Dizon, lauded Cebu’s efforts in handling the coronavirus pandemic in Central Visayas, and committed to construct more quarantine facilities, and increase its local laboratory testing capacity. (NTF against COVID-19 / MANILA BULLETIN) Dizon, who is also Chief Executive Officer of the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA), met with Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Lloyd Dino, Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia, Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella and Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes and other government agencies on May 9 to enhance discussions on the government’s overall efforts in containing the spread of COVID-19. Dizon said that there was a need further institute a system not only to protect Cebuanos now, but more importantly to protect them in the weeks and months to come. He highlighted the government’s strategy to “test, trace, and treat” (3Ts) to fight COVID-19. The goal for Cebu is to increase the present lab capacity of roughly 1,000 tests per day to 3,500. “We have instituted a very simple but effective way to fight covid-19: test, trace, treat or 3T's. We know there are cases in this area, there are over a thousand cases. While this is a big number, what we want to tell the people of Cebu is that we can beat this thing together,” Dizon said. Dizon went on that the national government under the leadership of President Duterte, Secretary Charlie Galvez, and the entire leadership of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) led by Health Secretary Francisco Duque, had instituted the 3Ts strategy, and he was delighted to not that the system was already in place here. “The national government is here to strengthen and augment the things that the officials here in Cebu have already done,” Dizon added. He also said the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), led by Secretary Mark Villar, has committed to build more isolation facilities in Cebu. Dizon mentioned that with his visit, the government has delivered more testing kits to Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) to further increase the capacity of the laboratories here in Cebu from a thousand tests per day to about 3,500 tests a day in partnership with the private sector. There were also rapid diagnostic test kits and personal protective equipment (PPEs) delivered to OPAV for the use at the VSMMC Sub-National Laboratory to assists the entire province and Cebu City for community level testing. Dizon also met with Bohol Governor Arthur Yap to discuss plans to increase testing capacity and expand isolation facilities in Bohol Province. He brought a team from the DOH and Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) to Bohol to inspect and start the accreditation process for laboratory facilities. “This virus can be controlled if we are ready with the infrastructure to control it and the national government has committed all-out support to Cebu and other provinces in Central Visayas to achieve this” Dizon said.