A certified medical assistant places a swab into a vile for one of the first 50 people tested for coronavirus at Flint’s first drive-thru testing site, Wednesday, April 15, 2020, at Atwood Stadium in Flint, Mich. | AP file photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH – 7) announced on Monday, June 29, that at least four privately owned hospitals are now awaiting to have their coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) testing laboratories accredited.
“As of today, we have four private hospitals whose molecular laboratories for COVID-19 are now pending licensing,” said Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, spokesperson of DOH – 7.
Two of the hospitals seeking accreditation from the Research Institute of Tropical Medicine (RITM) and DOH’s central office are based in Mandaue City while two are in Cebu City.
Loreche also said they were expecting the Philippine Red Cross to set-up and secure their license to operate their own COVID-19 testing laboratory in Cebu City.
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Presently, Cebu island has a total of three accredited COVID-19 molecular laboratories that carry out real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests.
Two of them are owned and managed by the government and are found in Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) and the other within DOH – 7’s compound that sits adjacent to VSMMC.
The third COVID-19 laboratory in Cebu is ARC Hospital located in Lapu-Lapu City. It is the first privately owned hospital allowed to do RT-PCR tests for COVID-19 detection. /dbs