MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the Department of Health (DOH) on Monday night to look into reports of “false positives” in Covid-19 testing conducted by the Philippine Red Cross (PRC).
Duterte stated during his Talk to the People that he had received allegations of false-positive results in swab testing at various PRC molecular laboratories headed by Senator Richard Gordon.
“I also would like to ask. Are your testing facilities and equipment are really as good as you say they are? Because I have heard of many false-positive cases from your laboratories. Can you enlighten the Filipino people on this?” he said.
Duterte said he was told that 44 of the 49 hospital employees who tested positive in swab tests processed by the PRC’s molecular laboratory in Subic later turned out to be false positives after being retested in another facility.
He claimed that 213 personnel of the Presidential Security Group tested positive during the PRC Manila’s processing, but their confirmatory tests came out negative.
He added that even officials from the Department of Finance have had similar experiences with the PRC.
“Because of this information then maybe the DOH must investigate this matter. You could be putting more people at risk. You could be falsely adding to the total positive cases per day of this country,” Duterte said.
DOH Secretary Francisco Duque III had previously stated that the department had received the complaint.
According to Duque, occurrences in PRC Subic are being investigated by the health department and the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine.
