National Policy Against Covid-19 Deputy Chief Implementer Vivencio Dizon on Wednesday said the country has conducted more than three million reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests for Covid-19 as of the middle of September.

In a statement, Dizon said daily Covid-19 testing in the country now reached 42,000 compared to 500 tests per day in March.

The number of accredited laboratories also increased to 125.

Dizon said the government will continue to innovate to test more Filipinos and accelerate the release of Covid-19 test results.

He added they are looking into rolling out antigen tests and pooled testing.

“This is really a prime example of what we can achieve together if the national government, the local governments, and the private sector work on one unified purpose,” he said.

Dizon said the aggressive testing program of the government is part of the second phase of the National Action Plan’s Prevent, Detect, Isolate, Treat, and Reintegrate (PDITR) strategy.

Under the PDITR strategy, the government’s goal is to quickly isolate Covid-19 patients from communities to lessen the transmission of the virus.

“We cannot argue the fact that we need to open up the economy now, as safely as possible. That, I think, should be our objective. How do we do this? The experts have said that if we are able to have the capacity to test, isolate, and treat, and we make the general population follow the minimum health standards such as wearing of (a) face mask and face shield, proper hand hygiene, and physical distancing, then, we can open up the economy. And this is what we’re seeing in other countries,” he added. (PNA)