My Statement on UP-developed COVID-19 test kits

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. I urge the government and UP to immediately mass-produce this test kit, if supplemental budget is necessary for this, I am more than willing to sponsor the measure. Since this is more affordable and more accessible, we will able to cater to more patients.

Thank you to our UP scientists for this speedy answer to our test kit problem. One reason for the growing panic in the past few days has been the severe lack of testing kits-we had only 2,000 testing kits, which is simply not enough to cater to our population, even just in Metro Manila. With UP's test kits, we can now more have a better diagnostic process for the virus, and hopefully, this will allow us to develop a better containment strategy as well, as we find out which areas have the most cases.