Opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima has urged the Congress to look into the current state of Covid-19 diagnostic testing in the country to assess, recalibrate and enhance the country’s testing abilities in light of the emergence of new variants.
In filing Senate Resolution 612, De Lima said it is imperative to evaluate and assess our current diagnostic testing protocols because the new strains and variants of the virus may affect the quality and reliability of testing results.
“There is a need to conduct a Senate inquiry into these matters to ensure that our testing capabilities and results are reliable and up to date in order to preserve the health and safety of the general public and ensure that the health protocols in place are still effective and responsive,” she said.
“It is better to be proactive than reactive given the uncertainty and imminent threats of these recent developments,” she added.
Dr. John Wong of the DOH’s technical advisory working group studying the coronavirus outbreak in the country warned that the UK Covid-19 variant has the dangerous potential of increasing the cases in the Philippines by 15-fold or around 300,000.
The first case of the UK variant has already been documented in the Philippines last Jan. 13 after samples from a Filipino who arrived from the United Arab Emirates on Jan. 7 yielded positive genome sequencing results.
“It is vital that we heed the opinion of scientific and medical experts that warn us that SARS-CoV-2 virus can mutate over time, resulting in genetic variation in the population of circulating viral strains,” De Lima said.
Source: Latest Politics News Today (Politics.com.ph)
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