{"id":259297,"date":"2020-06-25T05:23:32","date_gmt":"2020-06-25T09:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=259297"},"modified":"2020-06-25T05:23:32","modified_gmt":"2020-06-25T09:23:32","slug":"govt-targets-to-reach-1m-covid-19-tests-by-july","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/06\/25\/govt-targets-to-reach-1m-covid-19-tests-by-july\/","title":{"rendered":"Gov\u2019t targets to reach 1M Covid-19 tests by July"},"content":{"rendered":"

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FILE: Medical personnel perform a swab test on returning overseas Filipino workers at the Palacio de Maynila along Roxas Boulevard in Malate, Manila on Sunday (May 10, 2020). (PNA photo by Avito Dalan)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA \u2013 The government targets to reach one million tests for coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) by next month, National Policy Against Covid-19 Deputy Chief Implementer Vivencio Dizon said.<\/p>\n

In a Palace briefing Thursday, Dizon said the country now has the capacity to test more persons as over one million test kits arrived last weekend.<\/p>\n

The expanded targeted community testing will focus especially on Metro Manila, Central Luzon, Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Quezon), Cebu, and Davao, he said.<\/p>\n

As of June 23, actual Covid-19 tests already reached 612,571 from just 17,414 tests last March, he said.<\/p>\n

Dizon reiterated the country\u2019s daily testing capacity has improved since the Covid-19 outbreak in March with the increased number of testing laboratories and enough supply of test kits.<\/p>\n

From a 2,000 test capacity in a day in March, the country has a capacity to do 51,302 tests per day as of June 19, he added.<\/p>\n

The country already hit its 50,000 testing capacity target earlier than end-June 2020.<\/p>\n

He said the country now also has 66 testing laboratories.<\/p>\n

Dizon said a high number of confirmed Covid-19 cases will be expected in the coming weeks as the government accelerates the testing activities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is important that our public should understand that while we are increasing our testing capacity, we will find more positive cases; but the positivity rate is declining,\u201d he said in Filipino.<\/p>\n

Dizon said the Covid-19 positivity rate in the Philippines fell from 20 percent during the period when testing was limited, to nearly 5 percent to date.<\/p>\n

Positivity rate is the percentage of people confirmed being infected with Covid-19 out of the total number of tested persons.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to the WHO (World Health Organization), a 5-percent positivity rate and lower is a sign that a country is improving in its management on Covid-19 cases. We are near at that point. We are nearly below 5 percent,\u201d Dizon said.<\/p>\n

He added the turnaround time of Covid-19 tests also improved from more than two weeks in March to only 48 to 72 hours this month.<\/p>\n

This was also improved through automated testing that fast-track the results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  MANILA \u2013 The government targets to reach one million tests for coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) by next month, National …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":255999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,16,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news","category-news-ph","mauthors-kris-crismundo","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259298,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259297\/revisions\/259298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}