📋 Tender Overview
The capacity of the South Cotabato COVID-19 testing laboratory at the Dr. Arturo P Pingoy Medical Center DAPPMC has increased threefold with the acquisition of another GeneXpert machine.The 16-module Cepheid GeneXpert SARS-CoV2 machine that the provincial government purchased prior to the actual operation of the COVID lab at DAPPMC arrived at the General Santos International Airport on Saturday provincial health officer Dr. Rogelio Aturdido Jr. told Philippine Information Agency. The machine was immediately installed at the COVID lab and was made operational Monday. With this 16-module machine the capacity of our COVID lab has increased to about 150 per day Dr. Aturdido said. Before this the daily output of the facility was only about 50 samples in an 8-hour operation using a 4-module GeneXpert System. Both machines process each batch of samples in less than 50 minutes. However Dr. Aturdido pointed out that the potential of the upgraded capacity of the South Cotabato COVID lab can only be realized if this is backed with regular and sufficient supply of cartridges from the Department of Health DOH. We hope that with our improved capacity DOH will increase our next allocations of cartridges he said. In a press conference Friday Dr. Aturdido emphasized that having a high capacity COVID testing machine without the cartridges is like going to battle with firearms but without ammunitions. What can we do Were still lacking in protection. As of Monday morning the testing lab had only about 460 cartridges in stock with at least 150 samples to process for the entire day.In several interviews both Aturdido and Gov. Reynaldo Tamayo Jr. emphasized that the provincial government can allocate funds to purchase test kits but cannot do so because DOH has the exclusive contract with the supplier for these cartridges. DOH manages the distribution of these to testing labs across the country.Also on Friday Dr. Aturdido confirmed that based on DOH memorandum 2020-0258A South Cotabato is now classified as a special concern area.He elaborated that this is because first in Region 12 we have the most cases second our number of cases is increasing and third several barangays here have experienced clustering of cases.As of 1030 p.m. September 7 South Cotabato has recorded 179 cases 67 of these were recorded in only 6 days September 2 to 7.In its Facebook page the Provincial Government of South Cotabato announced that South Cotabato is the first local government unit in the country to purchase a 16-module Cepheid GeneXpert machine for SARS-CoV2 testing.Based on information provided by Macare Medicals Inc. the exclusive supplier and distributor of the said machine there are only three such machines in the country two at the Lung Center of the Philippines and one at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine which are both DOH-owned facilities.The COVID facility at the Dr. Arturo P. Pingoy Medical Center is also the first public private partnership COVID-19 testing laboratory in the country. Under the partnership the provincial LGU transferred its GeneXpert machine to the DAPPMC biosafety level 2 enhanced laboratory which was reconfigured to qualify as a COVID testing laboratory. The laboratory is being run by trained personnel from the provincial government and the private hospital.The South Cotabato COVID-19 testing laboratory at DAPPMC received its license to operate from the DOH on June 5. DED-PIA XII
