Magalong bats for consistency in city’s testing capacity

BAGUIO CITY  –  (March 5, 2021) – The city government will strive more to maintain consistency in its testing capacity as a tool to control the spread of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Mayor Benjamin Magalong said

The mayor said data on testing capacity showed the city had consistently had high testing rate.

For February this year, the city conducted a total of 13,567 Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests or an average of 566 tests as day boosting its total since March last year to 128,900 as of March 4.

The mayor believes that had testing capacity been factored in the determination of a locality’s status, the city would have had better standing than other areas whose numbers of cases are low but who had not been testing enough.

The city had remained under the stricter General Community Status despite having low daily attack rate, decreased health care utilization rate and high testing rate in February.

Despite its not being given weight in the quarantine measurement, testing will remain as a vital strategy in the city’s COVID-19 fight.

“While testing may mean increased number of cases, we are not bothered because testing helps us determine where the infections are coming from enabling us to implement measures to prevent more infections and even death.  We know our true situation and it is better than having low cases and false sense of security,” the mayor said. – Aileen P. Refuerzo