Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio and her brother Vice Mayor Sebastian Duterte (right, partly hidden) | (photo from Davao City Information Office)
Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio said the city cannot do mass testing for the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) in the city yet.
In an interview over the city-operated Davao City Disaster Radio, Duterte-Carpio said the city’s thrust is to conduct more tests first than to aim for mass testing. She said she is doing this to “manage” her constituents’ expectations.
“I would just like to manage the people’s expectation. We want to increase the testing but this is not mass testing,” she said in a mix of Cebuano and English.
She added that Davao Doctors Hospital, another privately-owned laboratory, that of the Department of Health and the city-operated TB center are still awaiting the Department of Health’s accreditation. Currently, the Southern Philippine Medical Center (SPMC) which can only accommodate 80 tests per day, is the only DOH-accredited facility to conduct COVID-19 tests.
Moreover, the presidential daughter also said the city is also looking to increase the number of its isolation facilities and to intensify case finding. (Rommel F. Lopez)