VSMMC Expands COVID-19 Laboratory

The Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) and the Department of Health – Central Visayas (DOH-7) started working on the expansion of their molecular laboratory facility to make more rooms for personnel, equipment, and machines to hasten the testing the increasing number of presumptive COVID-19 cases.

Samples of suspected COVID-19 cases require a highly specialized molecular laboratory.

Meanwhile, the DOH-7 Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory, a separate laboratory, is now being renovated to serve as the VSMMC’s extension molecular laboratory to cater samples sent from Regions 6 and 8 for COVID-19 testing.

Facilities in other Visayas regions however, are still being set up.

The Cebu City Government along with Cristina Lee Dino Foundation and Mr. Kim Wong have already donated 6 RTPCR machines to augment the molecular laboratory at VSMMC.

Other machines will be installed in the extension laboratory of VSMMC which will operate in 3-4 weeks.

Other essential machines like microplate spinner, mini centrifuge, refrigerated centrifuge, nCoV19 detection kits and other essentials were also donated to the facility.

A DNA/RNA Viral Extractor Automated Machine – a new technology and the first of its kind in the Philippines that effectively shortens the testing procedure was also among the items donated.

At the moment, VSMMC’s molecular testing facility is the only operational facility in the Visayas which was accredited by RITM. (MLC)