Data from the Department of Health (DOH) showed the Philippines had tested 2 million Filipinos nationwide for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as of August.
The DOH online tracker showed 109 licensed laboratories already tested 2,051,983 individuals as of August 19.
Coronavirus testing czar Vince Dizon earlier vowed to test 2 million Filipinos by August.
“Halos 1.4 milyon na po ang na-test natin, at kampante po tayo na hihigit sa dalawang milyon ang mate-test sa buwan ng Agosto,” Dizon said at a Palace briefing in July.
(We almost tested 1.4 million, and we are confident that we could test 2 million by August.)
Our World in Data, an England-based data and research platform, also said that the Philippines has the highest number of people tested for COVID-19 among the ASEAN-5 as of August 19.
Earlier, National Task Force Against COVID-19 said the Philippines tested more people than six other Asian nations in July.
Out of the 2 million who were tested, 214,444 tested positive for COVID-19, yielding a positivity rate of 10.5 percent. It doubled the World Health Organization’s benchmark of 5 percent or lower.
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2 million Filipinos tested for COVID-19 as of August
The country has so far recorded 178,022 confirmed cases, still the highest among countries in Southeast Asia.
“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.
DOH also disputed the study conducted by Ateneo de Manila University that said that there are around 2.8 million unreported COVID-19 cases in the country, citing the research did not consider the health systems differences among countries.
Jan Frederick Cruz of ADMU-Department of Economics said in his study “An Empirical Argument for Mass Testing: Crude Estimates of Unreported COVID19 Cases in the Philippines vis-à-vis Others in the ASEAN-5″ that there are 2.8 million unreported COVID-19 cases from April to June.
“May pagkakaiba na sa kakayanan ng health systems bago pa ang pandemic…sa atin po kasi, decentralized, kaya nagkakaiba ang kakayanan across the country. If you compare it by the numbers [of COVID-19 cases] na hindi natin isasama ang health system capacity ng isang bansa, hindi naman po appropriate iyon,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said at a Palace briefing.