Military to provide personnel in Second Mega Swapping Center

May 6, 2020

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is set to provide personnel to assist in the operation of the second Mega Swabbing Center that opened in Taguig City on Wednesday.

"For the bar coders and the encoders, we will supply people from the AFP. It doesn't require expertise, but they will be trained to become encoders and bar coders to assist the swabbers here to speed up the process," Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana told reporters.

"Initially the general headquarters provided 64 but they will be fielding more. I said as many as they can to speed up the process," he added.

The opening and inspection of the facility was also witnessed by Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo  Año, National Action Plan Against COVID19 Chief Implementer Secretary Carlito Galvez, Jr., Deputy Chief Implementer Secretary Vince Dizon and Taguig City Mayor Lino Cayetano.

Duque said the Department of Health (DOH) will provide hundreds of healthworkers to work as swabbers in the facility.

"We are still putting together the human resource that going to operate all this swabbing booths and the DOH has agreed to supply this mega swabbing booths or centers with about 400 human resource for health personnel," he said.

"They are medtechs, labtechs, nurses or nurse assistance who will be initially trained before they are deployed," he added.

Duque said the Office of the Executive Secretary is  coordinating with other government agencies that can provide personnel for encoding and bar coding.

"We're looking about 1,500 test daily. The Office of the Executive Secretary has begun communicating to various government agencies to complement our human resource for the encoding and the bar coding to lessen the presure to AFP, that it has to supply all (the needed personnel), (other) government agencies must also cooperate," he said.

Duque also acknowledged the collaboration of the private sector and the government in addressing the COVID-19 situation.

“(They have) exerted and mobilized resources to complement the national government’s efforts in ramping up our testing capacity in general, and in particular, to service the OFWS both land-based and sea-based,” he said

Lorenzana also expressed his gratitude to all frontliners who will be deployed for the facility.

"This will add to our capacity to test first the OFWs in Metro Manila so that we can immediately send them to their provinces," he said. Robina Asido/DMS