Gov't targets to test 50k individuals daily in June —Dizon

The Philippines targets to test 50,000 individuals per day in June, according to the deputy chief implementer of the national policy against COVID-19 Vince Dizon on Tuesday.

During a hearing conducted by the Senate Committee of the Whole, Dizon said this is part of the plan to achieve testing two percent of the over 100 million population in the Philippines to follow global best practices.

"The goal is we should be able to build up capacity to test up to 2% of the population, so we are looking at two million people in total," Dizon said.

In "epicenters" like Metro Manila, 10% to 12% of the residents have to undergo the test, he added.

Right now, only more than 207,000 individuals have undergone the COVID-19 test nationwide, based on the latest data in the Department of Health's online tracker.

Moving forward, Dizon said the plan is to increase the number of accredited testing laboratories from the current 35 to 66 by May 31 and reach a 30,000 daily testing capacity by then.

He also noted that through the efforts of the government and private sector, the number of tested individuals in one day have reached 11,123 on May 14 from only 5,000 tested on May 2.

Of those more than 11,000 tests conducted on the said date, 45% were processed by the Philippine Red Cross, 16% by the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine, 18% by other government laboratories, and 21% by other private laboratories.

As of May 19, the Philippines recorded a total of 12,718 cases of COVID-19 with 831 deaths and 2,729 recoveries.—AOL, GMA News