In its aim to track down all possible carriers of Corona Virus particularly in the industrial zone and to immediately isolate confirmed COVID-19 cases and prevent non-carriers from acquiring the virus, the Provincial Government of Bataan has facilitated the opening of its second molecular laboratory, this time at the Mariveles District Hospital (MDH).
MDH Chief of Hospital Dr. Hector Santos, together with the assigned pathologists and medical technicians in the laboratory led by Dra. Cyril Kim Evangelista, Dra. Marife Bonifacio and Dra. Diana B. Versoza; staff of the Provincial Engineering Office, and Engr. Bernabe Archeta performed a site inspection and checked the safety of negative pressure installed in each room’s ventilation last Thursday, October 22.
Once fully operational, the laboratory will have fully automated polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and extraction machines capable of conducting up to 500 tests per day. It has its own area for data encoding, donning and doffing, and sleeping quarters for the assigned pathologists and medical technicians.
Dr. Santos also shared that the laboratory is not only capable of processing specimen samples for Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) but can also perform rapid detection of other infectious diseases.
The 1Bataan BGHMC RT-PCR Laboratory, the province’s first molecular laboratory which opened last June 11 has, to date tested 28,034 specimen samples.
