Metro Pacific Hospitals Holdings Inc., one of the member companies of listed Metro Pacific Investments Corp., is ramping up efforts to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic by increasing its laboratory testing capacity and adopting strategies to address the “new normal” such as tele-health services.
MPIC chairman Manuel Pangilinan, in a virtual press briefing last week, pushed MPHHI to “wade into this testing effort” for COVID-19 nationwide.
“I feel hospital laboratories are the key in this fight against COVID-19, and what MPHHI is doing right now is on the right track—utilizing its advantage as the top tier nationwide hospital network to back up the Philippine testing effort by helping set up these facilities, and manning them as quickly as possible,” said Pangilinan.
The Philippines hopes to conduct 30,000 COVID-19 tests a day and possibly have as many as 78 laboratories by end of May. Presently, there are 26 laboratories which have already been certified by the Department of Health to take and process COVID-19 test specimens.