Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 3) – The city of Manila has teamed up with the private sector to increase testing capacity amid the COVID-19 crisis.
Manila Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso said that over 1,000 residents in Tondo were tested Sunday morning, in addition to the 854 individuals earlier tested in the Sampaloc district.
“We have tested 1,409 through rapid testing kits provided by Project ARK and we now have 109 [positive cases],” Moreno said in a media briefing.
The city of Manila received 3,000 rapid testing kits from Project Antibody Rapid Test Kits (ARK), an initiative by the private sector to aid COVID-19 testing at the barangay level. These specific kits were donated by motorcycle ride-hailing platform, Angkas.
According to the Inter-agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, persons under monitoring (PUMs) and healthcare workers who have no flu-like symptoms and no history of travel can be tested using the rapid antibody test kits.
RELATED: LIST: Who can be tested using rapid COVID-19 test kits?
“If we didn’t have the hard lockdown, we wouldn’t have these numbers,” Moreno added.
The entire first district of Manila, known as Tondo 1, was placed on a 48-hour total lockdown starting Sunday morning, a move to contain the spread of COVID-19 in the city.
RELATED: Entire District 1 in Tondo, Manila on 48-hour hard lockdown starting Sunday morning
Moreno said that carrying out the rapid tests is among the ways to identify who may be possible carriers of the virus in the densely populated city.
“Kapag ikaw ay naging matino at talagang sinusunod niyo yung social distancing, and yung quarantine and other protocols, we will open your barangay,” Moreno said.
[Translation: When you really follow social distancing, quarantine and other protocols, we will open your barangay.]
“Discipline must be put in the right place,” he added.
When asked if the local government is considering a possible extension of lockdown measures in parts of Manila, Moreno said it is in the pipeline but “we will be more surgical.”
“We started with a district, then we created a new mindset that [there is the] gravity of the situation. But for now, I cannot afford to have it extended and extended,” Moreno said.
Moreno expressed his gratitude to the private sector for their support, and said the city is now preparing for the possible scenarios once the enhanced community quarantine is lifted, among them the possible resurgence of COVID-19 cases.
“We, together with JCI, are now building a COVID-19 facility in the community, utilizing public school. We are now building a 40-bed capacity in one of our schools, Araullo High School,” Moreno said.
Moreno clarified that patients who yield positive results from the rapid testing will be subjected to nose and throat swabbing, which will be submitted to laboratories for confirmatory tests.
As of Saturday, there is a total of 573 COVID-19 cases in the city of Manila. Of this number, 102 were recorded in Tondo 1.
Meanwhile, authorities apprehended 176 violators since the start of the lockdown in Tondo 1, 80 percent of which came from one barangay, Moreno confirmed.
The Department of Health prefers the use of Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction or RT-PCR tests since it gives a definitive diagnosis. While it is the “gold standard test,” it takes at least 24 hours to process, sometimes even longer.
