Philippines has tested 2 million for COVID-19 as of August

Published August 21, 2020 1:16am
By JULIA MARI ORNEDO, GMA News

The Philippines on Wednesday reached its target to test 2 million Filipinos nationwide for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in August, data from the Department of Health (DOH) showed.

The online tracker of the DOH showed that 2,051,983 individuals had been tested by 109 licensed laboratories as of August 19. 

Coronavirus testing czar Vince Dizon earlier vowed that the number of Filipinos tested for COVID-19 would hit 2 million by August.

"We have already tested almost 1.4 million, and we are confident that more than two million will be tested in August," he said.Dizon said at a Palace briefing in July.

Figures collated by Our World in Data, an England-based data and research platform, also showed that the Philippines tested the highest number of people among the ASEAN-5 as of August 19.

On the same day, Malaysia logged 1.14 million individuals tested, followed by Indonesia with 1.10 million and Thailand with over 399,000. Singapore’s testing data was unavailable.

The National Task Force Against COVID-19 earlier said that the Philippines conducted more tests than six other Asian nations in July. 

Positivity rate

As the Philippines ramped up its testing capacity, it also identified more positive cases.

Out of the 2 million Filipinos who were tested, 214,444 were found positive for COVID-19, yielding a positivity rate of 10.5 percent—double the World Health Organization’s benchmark of 5 percent or lower.

The Philippines has so far recorded 178,022 confirmed cases, still the highest across Southeast Asia.

The DOH earlier explained that the total number of COVID-19-positive individuals does not equate to the official number of confirmed cases.

“The DOH is continuously validating the number of positive individuals as reported by laboratories. As such, the discrepancy with the number of confirmed cases do not necessarily reflect backlogs in case validation,” it said.

The department earlier conceded that the unrelenting surge of infections is no longer being driven by the country’s increased testing capacity but by the clustering of cases and community transmission. 

A total of 1,302 clusters of infection had been identified nationwide as of August 18. -NB, GMA News

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