Academe, health entities desperate for COVID-19 testing centers

By Emme Rose Santiagudo

Academic and health institutions together with the Iloilo City government are desperate to run a testing center in Iloilo to accommodate the increasing number of persons under investigation (PUIs) for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the region.

In a meeting organized by the Iloilo City government on Monday, representatives from University of the Philippines Visayas (UPV), University of San Agustin (USA), Western Visayas Medical Center (WVMC), West Visayas State University, an alumni group from UPV, and other members of the academe discussed the possibility of running a COVID-19 testing center in Iloilo City.

WVMC has been eyed as an official testing center but it currently awaits accreditation from the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) and Department of Health (DOH).

There is currently no testing facility for COVID-19 in Western Visayas. The nearest is the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City.

Also, there are no available COVID-19 test kits in Iloilo City and the entire region.

Swab results of suspected patients usually take two to three days before it can be confirmed by the RITM and with the newly imposed travel restrictions and enhanced community quarantine in Luzon, delays are expected.

Test kits capable of fast detection of Covid-19 were recently developed by scientists from UP.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the test kit but it will take about one to two weeks before it can finally be rolled out.

Mayor Jerry P. Treñas has expressed interest in purchasing the test kits once these are available in the market.

“If the Department of Health (DOH) will not give us test kits, then we have to purchase our own. How can we be so sure that we have no confirmed case here if we don’t have the test kits?” he lamented.

UPV and USA alongside WVMC have machines that are capable of running the COVID-19 test kits developed by UP.

“Genome Center Visayas, headed by Prof. Noel Ferriol, said that UP Visayas, University of San Agustin and the Western Visayas Medical Center are capable of running COVID-19 Test Kits newly developed by a team of UP experts from the University of the Philippines headed by Dr. Raul Destura,” a report published in the website of UP Visayas said.

apart from the equipment and infrastructure, USA is also capable of handling the registry and contract tracing tools for COVID-19, according to Dr. Jonel Saludes, Associate Vice President for Research and Global Relations of USA.

“We have the capacity to handle data privacy, COVID registry and contract tracing tool for center of informatics. This will ensure the city that data processed by the city government will be kept private and made available upon the authorization of the city government,” Saludes said during the meeting.

Despite the presence of the necessary requirements, the schools and WVMC still need the accreditation and test kits before they can start testing samples.

Latest data from the Department of Health (DOH) 6 indicated that there are only 99 hospitals in the region catering to 7,904,899 population in Region 6. These hospitals can only offer 7,868 beds.

The Iloilo City Health Office (CHO) has already recorded 27 PUIs and 980 PUMs as of Wednesday morning.

PUIs are patients with signs and symptoms and with travel history to infected areas. PUMs have no signs and symptoms but were potentially exposed in infected areas.

As the number of persons under monitoring (PUM) and PUIs in the region increases, every day that passes remains crucial in determining if a PUI is positive for COVID-19 or not.

While local governments in the region imposed drastic efforts to limit travel and movement of people, testing centers and test kits are highly needed in the region to detect and contain the coronavirus.