Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 23) — A Filipino chemical engineer takes the lead in helping reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the country, and deaths related to the coronavirus.

Prof. Kathleen Aviso, Assistant Dean for Research and Advanced Studies at the De La Salle University’s Gokongwei College of Engineering, and her team of researchers developed an anti-viral and vaccine allocation model that can help reduce COVID-19 mortality rates in the country.

In an interview with CNN Philippines’ The Final Word on Tuesday, Aviso explained the model focused on efficacy of drugs and vaccines and the severity of COVID-19 among people. Available resources of the country’s healthcare facilities were also taken into consideration in formulating the model.

“Our initial model results showed that if we knew the efficacy of these drugs and we knew our capabilities, it’s possible to reduce our mortality rates if we can allocate these drugs efficiently,” Aviso said.

Aviso revealed they are also developing a web-based application that will help the government and other concerned societal sectors in their COVID-19 response strategies using their model.

“We showed here that it’s possible to develop models wherein we want to target either reducing the spread of virus or we want to reduce the mortality rates of the country. These two can potentially resolve in different allocation procedures,” she shared.

Aviso was recently cited by asianscientist.com as one of Asia’s Rising Scientists for her work in curbing the effects of climate change.