Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte wants the National Task Force Against Covid-19 (NTF) to conduct rapid antigen testing of people entering and leaving the “NCR Plus” bubble as a more effective test-based strategy to contain the quick spread of the coronavirus and its more infectious variants amid the alarming spike in caseload since mid-March that now threatens to overwhelm our medical front-liners and healthcare facilities.
Villafuerte proposed that the NTF headed by its chief implementer and vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. coordinate with the elective officials of the concerned local government units (LGUs) in putting up testing stations in all border checkpoints in the National Capital Region (NCR) and its four neighboring provinces belonging to the “NCR Plus” bubble, which has been placed under enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) for another week till April 11.
“Emphasis should be on testing those leaving the bubble, particularly those coming from Metro Manila, given that NCR is the epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak in the Philippines that accounts for about two-thirds of total infections.”
He said “the rapid testing of travelers would enable the NTF, DILG (Department of Interior and Local Government) and other agencies to immediately detect, hold and then send to quarantine facilities for treatment those found positive for the coronavirus, rather than allow these infected travelers to cross borders and possibly infect people they come in close contact with along their trips and in their places of destination.”
He issued this statement in response to the weekend announcement by the DILG that various state agencies would allot 18,000 more contact tracers combined as the government targets to locate people exposed to Covid-19 patients within 24 hours, as it intensifies its “prevent, detect, isolate, treat and reintegrate” (PDITR) strategy in the areas under the ‘NCR Plus’ bubble.
“Emphasis should be on testing those leaving the bubble, particularly those coming from Metro Manila, given that NCR is the epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak in the Philippines that accounts for about two-thirds of total infections,” he said.
According to Department of Health (DOH) data, there were 138,948 active infections in the country as of April 1, with those in the “NCR Plus’ bubble accounting for 100,298 or 72% of the cases.
Villafuerte said the government should complement its extended enhance community quarantine (ECQ) in NCR and the neighboring provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal with a more aggressive strategy to detect, isolate and treat infected people while it awaits the arrival of the bulk of the ordered anti-virus jabs for its vaccine rollout plan.
“Expanded testing is our best shot at preventing future infection surges and containing the pandemic, especially with the advent of more transmissible Covid-19 variants,” he said.
He said that using rapid antigen test kits in border checkpoints to detect the infected people among outgoing and incoming travelers in the “NCR Plus” bubble is ideal, considering that it is relatively cheaper and faster, with results available in just 15 minutes after the tests are done.
Villafuerte said there has not been any unusual infection surge in Camarines Sur partly because provincial officials had been using rapid antigen kits to test some 50,000 incoming travelers since June last year.
Rapid antigen testing is a relatively inexpensive test in both point-of-care and laboratory settings to detect the SARS-CoV02 virus that is responsible for Covid-19.
Those infected are immediately separated and sent to be treated in any of Camarines Sur’s over a dozen isolation and treatment facilities, before they are eventually allowed to go home, he said.
Villafuerte earlier welcomed the new government target of conducting 90,000 to 100,000 Covid-19 tests per day via the combined use of reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and rapid antigen tests.
From the daily average of 50,000 tests, the DOH had increased its target to 100,000 after the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) authorized the use of antigen testing, especially in the “NCR Plus” bubble where experts have seen what they called a “second wave” of Covid-19 cases.
Villafuerte also called on the NTF and IATF to green-light the use of antigen testing not only in ‘NCR Plus” areas but in all other parts of the country as well, to improve the testing, detection, tracing and treatment capabilities of all LGUs.
He stressed the urgency for the government to ramp up its mass testing as he pointed to a recent World Bank assessment report that the Philippines’ reliance on long lockdowns in lieu of a test-based strategy at the onset of the pandemic was responsible for its continued economic slowdown at a time when other economies in the region have started to recover.
The World Bank report revealed that the Philippines has conducted only 17 tests per confirmed Covid-19 case, as against 4,277 tests in Vietnam; 2,080 in Laos; 1,853 in China; 897 in Cambodia and 244 in Malaysia
The same report said that because of mass testing, lockdowns were not as severe in these economies, and gross domestic product (GDP) growth was at 2.9% in Vietnam, 2.3% in China, 0.4% in Laos, minus 3.1% in Cambodia and minus 5.6% in Malaysia in 2020. The Philippines posted a bigger GDP contraction of minus 9.5% last year.
Rapid antigen testing is a relatively inexpensive test in both point-of-care and laboratory settings to detect the SARS-CoV02 virus that is responsible for Covid-19. Test results are available in about 15 minutes, compared to the costlier RT-PCR whose turnaround time usually takes 2-3 days.
Villafuerte pointed out that countries such as the United States (US), Canada, Italy, France and Germany have turned to the faster and cheaper antigen tests to avoid the undue delays in efforts to detect, trace and treat Covid-infected people.
In Camarines Sur, Villafuerte said the provincial government last year purchased an initial 20,000 rapid antigen test kits from the Illinois-based Abbott Laboratories, using funds from the P6-billion Bayanihan Grant released by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) for the 81 provincial LGUs, equivalent to a half-month Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) share of every province.
The provincial government had likewise converted the then-newly built Camarines Sur Medical Center in Bula into Camarines Sur’s main Covid-19 isolation and treatment facility.
It became one of the premier hospitals outside Metro Manila equipped with cutting-edge equipment such as portable digital X-ray machines, an ABG machine to check oxygenation levels, handheld ultrasound devices to check Covid-induced pneumonia, defibrillators to revive people with irregular heartbeats and a computer-based ECG to monitor the heart’s electrical signals of patients with heart conditions.
Moreover, this Covid-19 isolation and treatment facility in Bula is equipped with about two dozen ventilators for the use of patients with critical symptoms of this virus.
This facility has a relatively big number of ventilators because the provincial government had used local funds to purchase 15 such machines—the single biggest one-time acquisition of ventilators by a provincial LGU in the entire country.
By using rapid antigen testing whose results become available in just 15 minutes, Villafuerte said the provincial government has managed to do a better job of detecting right away who among those returning to Camarines Sur were infected with the virus and then sending these Covid-positive people to any of the province’s over a dozen quarantine/treatment facilities.
The 50,000 tested folk include, he said, some 5,000 Camarines Sur natives whom the provincial government had helped return to the province during this pandemic under its pioneering Balik Probinsya program.
The congressman and Gov. Migz Villafuerte had initiated a back-to-the-province project even before President Duterte institutionalized the Balik Probinsya, Bagong Pagasa (BP2) Program by way of Executive Order (EO) No. 114 issued on May 6, 2020.