The city government is looking at putting up its own testing laboratory for COVID-19, Mayor Sara Duterte said on Thursday.
Duterte said it will increase the number of testing facilities in the city as the Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) can only cater to around 60 to 80 tests every day.
She also noted that the efforts of the city government so far has been primarily only on creating control measures to minimize the movement of the people and putting up PUI centers.
With this, they will utilize a portion of the fund from the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act downloaded by the national government to the city.
The mayor said the ordinance requesting for the budget will be submitted to the City Council next week.
“We have allotted (a budget) from there for a COVID-19 testing facility/laboratory here in Davao City,” Duterte said.
The city government will follow the model created for the COVID-19 laboratory in Marikina City.
“We have reached out to Marikina and they are helping us, guiding us on how we are going to set up the local government unit COVID-19 testing laboratory. We already have details on this and we are looking into it as of now,” she said.
Duterte said they are planning to establish at least three facilities to be accredited as COVID-19 laboratories in the city.
“We are helping Davao Doctors’ Hospital. We are pushing for their accreditation as a COVID-19 laboratory,” she said, adding that the city government is also waiting for the documents of one private laboratory.
“We are also helping them to push their papers as to what we are doing with the Davao Doctors’ Hospital,” Duterte added.
