GENERAL SANTOS CITY – The city government has appealed to the Department of Health (DOH) to allocate additional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and rapid test kits to cope with its increasing requirement for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) testing.
This, as City Administrator Arnel Zapatos admitted that the confirmatory PCR testing at the St. Elizabeth Hospital’s Covid-19 laboratory here for suspected and probable patients have been put on hold since last week due to the lack of test cartridges.
The local government had signed an agreement with the hospital, which operates the only testing laboratory for the disease to accommodate samples from the area.
St. Elizabeth, which is operated by the Metro Pacific Hospital Holdings Inc., temporarily suspended the processing of specimens from the city and Sarangani province last July 27 due to the limited availability of the testing cartridges.
On Tuesday, the hospital issued an advisory that it has resumed the rapid PCR testing but only focused on the “testing needs of healthcare workers, the City Health Office (CHO) of General Santos, and Provincial Health Office of Sarangani” due to the problem.
Zapatos said the DOH provided about 420 cartridges to remedy the problem, but they could be used up soon due to the area’s requirements.
He said the allocation also included patients from Sarangani province based on the zoning implemented by DOH-12 for the processing of swab samples for PCR testing.
“The mayor (Ronnel Rivera) requested for the delivery of additional cartridges, as well as the rapid test kits,” he told reporters.
The official said the local government has been looking for private suppliers of cartridges that could be used by St. Elizabeth’s GeneXpert Xpress machine, but only one was available.
He said they also requested for the provision of additional rapid test kits as the 5,000 units earlier delivered by the National Task Force against COVID-19 has already ran out.
The local government is also working on the purchase of 7,000 rapid test kits to augment its requirements, he said.
As of Tuesday morning, the confirmed COVID-19 cases in the city was at 32, with seven recoveries.
But the CHO said the city remains free from local transmission of the disease and all cases involved returning locally-stranded individuals and overseas Filipino workers.
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