“I am very happy to hear that the FDA has given the go-ahead for the use of the COVID-19 test kits developed by our scientists over at UP,” Zubiri, a UP graduate himself, said in a statement on Tuesday. ADVERTISEMENT“I urge the government and UP to immediately mass-produce this test kit, if the supplemental budget is necessary for this, I am more than willing to sponsor the measure. Zubiri then thanked UP scientists for “this speedy answer to our test kit problem.”This after he noted the “severe lack of testing kits” in the country. “We had only 2,000 testing kits, which is simply not enough to cater to our population, even just in Metro Manila,” he said. President Rodrigo Duterte already declared a state of public health emergency in the Philippines amid the COVID-19 outbreak.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer March 10, 2020 07:41 UTC