“Test Kits Running Out In Baguio”

April 30, 2020 JUST IN

Baguio’s action plan to address the spike of COVID19 cases in the past days has been laid down Wednesday.

While agreeing that the increase in cases was expected with the start of the risk-based mass testing among health workers, Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong expressed concern that the insufficiency of the test kits and reagents would thwart the mass testing’s aim to give a picture of the extent of infection in the city.

The mayor said that because of the problem,  the city needs to take the initiative to purchase its own test kits to close the gap even as he urged the Department of Health to do its part by providing the needed kits and consumables if it wants the mass testing to succeed.

He said with the city’s goal of testing 200 persons at risk per day, the department should provide enough testing materials as well as back-up medical personnel to undertake the tests.

“Even if we have a system in place, the problem remains if the DOH will not provide us with enough resources.  It’s like letting your soldiers go to war without providing enough ammunition.  And the true war setting is even better because you can see the enemies.  With our situation now, we are up against an unseen enemy,” Magalong said.

Until now the DOH had only provided 100 Real Time Polymerate Chain Reaction confirmatory swab test kits and had allocated only a total of 8,100 of such kits for the entire Northern Luzon.

Magalong believed that with the area population of 10.5 million against 8,100 test kits, only .07 percent of the population stand to be covered.

The city has four PCR machines, only one of which came from DOH.

As of Wednesday, only 2,000 RT PCR tests are left while the city’s Rapid Diagnostic Test which it solicited from private entities are now down to just 700.

“We are running out of test kits and we have barely scratched the surface.  Until now, there is still no clear picture as to the city’s true COVID picture thus we need to do some initiatives.”

He also pointed out the need to do resource planning for the coming months to include additional personnel to allow rest time for the existing ones.

He also sought the streamlining of testing procedure of the DOH to eliminate the lag time between the testing and in determining the results.

“We expect that the next two weeks will be challenging as our case doubling time has also decreased from the original 96 days.  We are now classified as high risk with a gloomy projection that if we fail to arrest the problem, we will have 39,000 cases by September.  So I hope we can institute the needed measures,” Magalong continued.

He asked the city finance committee to work out the emergency purchase of P10 million worth of test kits.

As to PPEs, the mayor said the city has enough stock for one more month but has to work out more for its reserves.

The activation of the refurbished Sto. Niño Hospital is also being worked out as a reserve in case more infections occur.

Documents are now being fast-tracked for DOH approval.

City Administrator Bonifacio Dela Peña assured that the building is ready for occupancy except for logistics like security, utilities, housekeeping, administrative and medical personnel which can be prepared any time.

The mayor said an agreement was reached with hospital administrators that hospitals in the city will no longer accept COVID-19 patients except BGHMC.

Artemio Dumlao