{"id":261972,"date":"2020-07-17T01:06:06","date_gmt":"2020-07-17T05:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=261972"},"modified":"2020-07-17T01:06:06","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T05:06:06","slug":"media-workers-may-be-tested-quarterly-doh-exec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/07\/17\/media-workers-may-be-tested-quarterly-doh-exec\/","title":{"rendered":"Media workers may be tested quarterly: DOH exec"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Citing the new guidelines on expanded Covid-19 testing, Department of Health (DOH) Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said “mass media is included in subgroup J or economic priority workers in high priority sectors with high interaction and exposure to the public and are living or working in special concern areas”. (Pixabay photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Media workers may be tested for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) every three months, a health official said Thursday.<\/p>\n

Citing the new guidelines on expanded Covid-19 testing, Department of Health (DOH) Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said “mass media is included in subgroup J or economic priority workers in high priority sectors with high interaction and exposure to the public and are living or working in special concern areas”.<\/p>\n

“Kayo po ay maaaring ma<\/em>-test every three months.\u00a0Ngunit, bago pa man mapalawak ang ating<\/em>\u00a0testing guidelines,\u00a0pasok po kayo at kahit sinong Pilipino na<\/em>\u00a0symptomatic\u00a0sa<\/em>\u00a0subgroups A, B and C\u00a0at ‘yung mga<\/em>\u00a0asymptomatic\u00a0pero may<\/em>\u00a0history of exposure\u00a0sa<\/em>\u00a0subgroup D (You may be tested every three months. Even before the expansion of our testing guidelines, you [mass media] and any symptomatic individual are included in subgroups A, B, and C and those who are asymptomatic but have exposure history in subgroup D),” Vergeire said.<\/p>\n

Testing costs for the subgroups will be covered by PhilHealth.<\/p>\n

“O kaya naman kung mayroon kayong<\/em>\u00a0private insurance coverage\u00a0para ma<\/em>-reimburse (Or, if you have private insurance coverage, you can reimburse) for testing,” Vergeire said.<\/p>\n

According to the new guidelines on expanded Covid-19 testing, Filipinos who do not belong to any of the subgroups may undergo RT-PCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) test at their own cost.<\/p>\n

“Ikaklaro ko rin po, nakapaloob sa ating bagong\u00a0<\/em>guidelines\u00a0na ang<\/em>\u00a0rapid point of care antibody-based test kits\u00a0ay hindi dapat gamitin upang ma-<\/em>rule out\u00a0ang<\/em>\u00a0Covid-19.\u00a0Ang mga<\/em>\u00a0test\u00a0na ito ay kailangan pa rin gamitin kasama ang<\/em>\u00a0RT-PCR (I will also clarify that the new guidelines state that rapid point of care antibody-based test kits cannot be used to rule out Covid-19. These tests must still be used with RT-PCR),” Vergeire said.<\/p>\n

There are currently two tests for the Covid-19 virus — the RT-PCR swab test and antibody blood test. The antibody blood test identifies antibodies produced by the immune system, while the RT-PCR detects the presence of virus and measures viral load.<\/p>\n

As for the test results, RT-PCR has longer waiting time, while the rapid antibody test yields faster test results. A positive rapid test result may require a confirmatory PCR-based test afterward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA\u00a0\u2013 Media workers may be tested for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) every three months, a health official said Thursday. Citing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":246208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,16,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news","category-news-ph","mauthors-ma-teresa-montemayor","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261972","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=261972"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":261973,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261972\/revisions\/261973"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}