MANILA, Philippines — Some “VIPs” made direct requests to the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) to be tested for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Francisco Duque III admitted Tuesday. “For those VIPs, so to speak, who had requested that they be tested, they actually fit in the initial set of criteria that would allow them for testing,” Duque said. “There will have to be a recalibration of those testing criteria because now we have more. We have 100,000 testing kits from China that have already been evaluated with the standards of RITM,” Duque said. Over 100,000 testing kits have been received by the Philippine government from China over the weekend.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer March 24, 2020 00:22 UTC