Bohol Island News Staff | Posted on March 30, 2020
The Governor Celestino Gallares Memorial Medical Center in Tagbilaran City may soon operate as one of the subnational laboratories for the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) testing in Central Visayas.
In a post on Monday evening, the Department of Health (DOH) in the Philippines shared that it is one of the hospitals in the country currently being assessed to soon become operational.
Currently, the hospital is on stage 2 or the validation period.
“A team from DOH and RITM, and WHO will conduct an on site visit to check the correctness of the self-assessment. The team will inform the laboratory of its deficiencies, and the laboratory will have to comply with recommendation before proceeding to the next stage,” DOH said.
There are five stages in which the hospital goes through in order to become a Covid-19 Laboratory.
Stage 3 includes personnel training. Stage 4 is proficiency testing where the laboratory will first need to test 5 positive samples as confirmed by RITM before reaching Stage 5, which is a full-scale implementation.
Once it reaches Stage 5, it can now be certified and allowed to process and test samples at full scale.
For now, it is only the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City that is accredited to conduct Covid-19 testing.
Other hospitals in the Visayas that are being assessed are West Visayas Medical Center (Iloilo), Easter Visayas Regional Medical Center (Tacloban City), Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital (Bacolod City), Western Visayas State University Mecial Center (Iloilo City), and Negros Oriental Provincial Hospital (Dumaguete City).
