Red Cross fetes labs’ anniversary

It was on this day last year when the Philippine Red Cross (PRC), the country’s premier humanitarian organization, officially opened its first molecular laboratory to test for Covid-19 in its headquarters located in Mandaluyong City.

The Philippines was still in the initial phase of fighting against the invisible enemy during this time.

Prior to PRC’s intervention, the national government had to send swab samples abroad due to lack of local Covid-19 testing facility.

Back then, only the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) was the facility capable of testing swab samples to detect Covid-19. RITM can process 300 samples per day. Results of the tests can be received after a week.

On 14 April 2020, the RITM accredited the private humanitarian group’s laboratory to conduct Covid-19 RT-PCR testing.

From 300 patients being tested daily, PRC has helped test additional 2,000 patients per day and deliver test results within 24 to 48 hours.

Today, PRC has at least 13 Covid-19 testing facilities strategically located around Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

It can test as many as 48,000 individuals daily, effectively boosting the national Covid-19 testing capacity.

The group has contributed 24 percent of the national test output and 34 percent of the tests of Metro Manila — the epicenter of Covid-19 in the Philippines — conducting over 2.5 million tests.

Indeed, the country could have had less than two million tests as of today without the PRC.

But what drove the PRC take on this huge challenge of building molecular laboratories with Biosafety Level 2 capacity?

“To save lives,” PRC chair and Senator Richard Gordon says.

Witnessing that the Covid-19 death toll began to rise during the onset of the pandemic, Gordon looked at the attempts of other countries to curb the spread of the virus.

He was determined that testing was the “key” to drain the swamp.

The idea was to fight the deadly enemy, by testing and identifying those infected in the quickest possible time and covering as many people as possible and isolate those who tested positive.

This appeared to be a gigantic humanitarian task, but everyone went into overdrive.

Not known to many, the PRC has already capacitated itself to respond to a pandemic since 2019.