Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 12) – San Miguel Corporation is donating swabbing booths and test kits to local governments in Metro Manila to help expand COVID-19 testing at the barangay level.
The diversified conglomerate announced on Tuesday that it has teamed up with all 17 local government units in the national capital region to set up more testing booths in areas with a high density of COVID-19 cases, while also providing the Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction or RT-PCR tests.
SMC President and Chief Operating Officer Ramon Ang said this will complement the national government’s efforts to expand coronavirus testing, which for now is focused on major commercial areas, and testing returning overseas Filipino workers.
“Our aim is to help flatten the curve in our less fortunate barangays, especially in areas where there have been outbreaks,” Ang said in a statement on Tuesday. “Our less-fortunate countrymen are really vulnerable, because their living conditions make it harder to observe social distancing and other preventive measures. So we want to focus our efforts on helping them.”
Apart from donating the test kits, SMC said it is also donating RT-PCR machines, to help significantly increase the number of tests that can be processed daily.
“We need to produce more test kits, and make testing affordable, if not free, to the hardest-hit communities,” Ang said. “We also need enough equipment to be able to process all these tests. We have to mobilize all these components to be able to test at scale.”
SMC said it will donate three sets of testing equipment, which includes RT-PCR machines and automated RNA extraction machines, to health facilities in Metro Manila, among them the National Center for Mental Health in Mandaluyong City.
RT-PCR tests, considered the “gold standard” by health experts, are used in confirmatory testing for the coronavirus. With the RT-PCR tests, trained professionals test nose and throat swabs to find out whether a person has coronavirus. When the repeat test yields a negative result, the patient can be allowed to go home.
Ang said that while local governments have initiated testing efforts and have their own budgets to do so, the company’s donation would help expand testing capacity, especially now that the government is preparing to lift the enhanced community quarantine in some parts of Luzon.
Malacañang earlier announced that Metro Manila, Laguna province, and Cebu City will be placed under “modified” enhanced community quarantine from May 16 to May 31, meaning authorities will allow the limited reopening of select manufacturing and processing plants, and limited transportation services, while Cavite Governor Jonvic Remulla announced that the province will shift to a general community quarantine beginning May 16.
Meantime, SMC is also moving ahead with plans to set up its own testing laboratory, to cater to its 70,000 employees and extended workforce who will undergo COVID-19 testing.
Ang stressed the need to regulate the price of testing, citing reports that some individuals have paid as much as ₱4,000 to get tested, while the company was able to procure the tests at less than ₱1,500 each.
“We believe that this is a fair enough rate for medical facilities that are using donated equipment and PPEs to charge especially to small companies who would have to test their employees to be able to safely reopen their workplaces,” Ang said.
While Ang noted that the test kits are in short supply, he said authorities should make sure testing is affordable at this time given that “this pandemic has profoundly affected the lives and livelihood of millions of Filipinos.”
