LA TRINIDAD, Benguet Benguet caretaker congressman and Anti-Crime and Terrorism through Community Involvement and Support (ACT-CIS) Party-list Rep. Eric Go Yap was able to course out assorted test kits from the national inter-agency task force for the management of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases to further improve the testing capacity of the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center (BGHMC), the designated sub-national testing laboratory in Northern Luzon, as part of his long standing commitment to help in cascading to the grassroots level the campaign against the spread of the dreaded Corona Virus Disease (COVID) 2019 in the said area.
Kevin Edward See, Chief of Staff of Congressman Yap, formally turned over the assorted test kits that is capable of producing some 10,000 tests to the BGHMC to form part of the laboratory’s available supply that will guarantee its improved testing capacity for the increasing number of swab samples from the areas covered by the hospital’s operation.
He added that the consumables for the automated extraction machine that was donated by Congressman Yap to the Benguet General Hospital (BeGH) where the same was temporarily loaned to the BGHMC by virtue of a memorandum of agreement between the two hospitals will be arriving in the next two weeks as per information from National Anti-COVID Action Plan Deputy Chief Implementer and Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) president Vince Dizon.
Yap earlier donated the reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and automated extraction machines to the BeGH purposely for its molecular laboratory but while the same is being constructed and undergoing the licensing procedures, the machines were loaned to the BGHMC to help in speeding up the release of test results.
The lawmaker’s aide explained that since the sourced out test kits cannot be used in the province because of the absence of the accredited laboratory, Congressman Yap deemed it proper to turnover the available test kits for Benguet to BGHMC to be used in testing the swab samples coming from the different parts of Northern Luzon because of the need to be on the offensive mode against the deadly virus.
According to him, the turned over test kits is just the initial wave of test kits and consumables from the Benguet caretaker congressman as more support is being sourced out from the government and the private sector to improve the testing capacity of the existing sub-national laboratory.
Yap is also coordinating with the health department to provide the accredited suppliers of consumables for the automated extraction machine so that he will personally get in touch with them to sustain the provision of the needed supply to maximize the use of the said machine in fastracking the release of swab test results.
At present, BGHMC is capable of coming out with at least 2,000 tests per day compared to the 600 to 800 tests that were done when the extraction of the swab samples was done manually during its early operation as a sub-national testing laboratory that was accredited by the health department.
By Hent
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