Pacquiao turns over testing kits

INTERNATIONAL boxing icon Sen. Emmanuel “Manny” Pacquiao turned over on Friday to the Department of Health (DoH) 57,000 coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) testing kits donated to the Philippines by Alibaba founder Jack Ma.

Pacquiao said the P400 million worth of kits donated by Ma through the Manny Pacquiao Foundation would go a long way in the fight against the coronavirus.

The kits were turned over at the DoH main office in Manila by Pacquaio’s special assistant Jake Joson, Manny Pacquiao Foundation head Choi Garcia, business manager Arnold Vegafria and legal counsel Brando Viernesto.

The donation was received by health officials led by San Lazaro infectious disease department head scientist Dr. Rongene Solante and representatives of the Philipine General Hospital.

Pacquiao said increasing the government’s capacity to administer Covid-19 tests is a sure-fire formula to contain the spread of the virus, which has brought the whole of humanity into a state of utter despair and helplessness.

The detection kit for Covid-19 RNA ( PCR- Fluorescence Probing) will be used “for the in vitro qualitative detection of novel coronavirus ORFlab and N gene in the throat swabs, sputum specimens of suspected pneumonia patients infected by novel coronavirus, suspected clustering cases and others needing diagnosis or differential diagnosis for novel coronavirus.”

The kits are similar to the ones used by the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Pacquiao said.

Aside from the kits, Pacquiao said he also received from Ma 500,000 face masks, which would also be turned over to President Rodrigo Duterte for distribution. This is on top of the 700,000 face masks that he had already donated to various agencies through the help of several friends in the business community.