Photo from the Department of Health
Yesterday, the Department of Health (DOH) Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said that some COVID-19 test kits donated by China were only “40 percent accurate” based on standards of the World Health Organization.
She added that the department did not use the test kits because of the low accuracy rate.
However, the Chinese Embassy in Manila refuted the claims, saying that the tests kits were not from them.
In a statement, the embassy said, “The test kits mentioned by the DOH official on 28 March 2020 during the press briefing were neither tested by RITM (Research Institute for Topical Medicine) which did not receive any kit sample for lab validation, nor donated by the Chinese government.”
Today, the DOH released a statement clarifying their earlier statement.
In a statement, the department said, “The Department of Health wishes to clarify that the initial 2,000 BGI RT-PCR test kits and the 100,000 Sansure RT-PCR test kits donated by the Chinese government have been assessed by the RITM to be at par with test kits provided by the World Health Organization after parallel testing were done.”
It added that the test kits Undersecretary Vergeire mentioned yesterday were from another brand “that was proposed to be donated by a private foundation.”
The statement ended with the department’s apology “for any confusion that previously issued statements have caused.”
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