Harry Roque, spokesperson of the COVID-19 task force, says testing capacity should have been immediately expanded as early as the country's first imported case.
COUNTRY PLAYS CATCH-UP. Presidential Spokesperson and IATF spokesperson Harry Roque admits lapses in the government's coronavirus response. Malacañang file photo
In a virtual press conference on Thursday, July 9, Presidential Spokesperson and task force spokesperson Harry Roque regretted that the country had only one laboratory for coronavirus tests in the first two months of the pandemic.
Later on Thursday, DOH spokesperson Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire was asked by media to react to Roque's remarks. "Because the virus was new in January, we had no capability to conduct tests for this and instead we would send our specimens to Australia for testing. Before, there was no standard for processing of laboratories based on biosafety requirements," she said in Filipino.
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