CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga — The city government of San Fernando is now ready to conduct expanded testing for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases.
Mayor Edwin Santiago said that as early as February when the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in the country, they were already planning about the testing and possible partnership with private institutions.
As part of the expanded testing, the city prioritized the nasal swabbing of frontliners whose work fall under healthcare, sanitation and traffic management.
City Health Office Head Renely Tungol said they are targeting to test about 400 frontline workers via Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR).
“Since March, our frontline personnel are working to fight COVID-19, so they are among the high risk group. That is why we prioritize them in our expanded testing to ensure their safety and at the same time, make them feel loved and valued,” Tungol said.
For the first batch, she said 50 frontliners were subjected to nasal swabbing to determine whether or not they are positive to the virus.
“For our next sessions, we are planning to beef up our testing capacity to 100 frontliners until we finish our target,” the health officer said.
Aside from front liners, they are set to test others prioritizing all the Fernandino suspected cases in the communities.
“We have met with the barangay captains and instructed them to start mapping in their respective villages for our expanded testing,” the health officer said.
Earlier, the city government conducted rapid antibody test (RAT) to 500 market vendors as part of the city’s mass testing initiatives.
“Those who yielded positive in the RAT will also be subjected to confirmatory tests via RT-PCR and were isolated,”Tungol clarified.
All swab samples collected will be sent to the Green City Medical Center for processing.