The country’s coronavirus testing czar has urged the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) to include saliva testing in its coronavirus package.

Gracing the Philippine Red Cross’ launching of saliva testing in Mandaluyong City on Monday, Vince Dizon said he would inform Philhealth to approve saliva tests as soon as possible.

“We will also be writing [to] the Philhealth formally to ask them to cover the saliva test, which is much much cheaper than the current PCR test being covered by the PhilHealth,” Hizon said per a report by Manila Times.

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So far, only the swab test is covered by PhilHealth.

A saliva test costs Php2,000, almost half the price of a swab test, which the Red Cross offers for P3,800.

Dizon will be coordinating with one-stop shops in airports to have saliva tests administered to Overseas Filipino Workers.

The Red Cross launched the tests in their molecular laboratories after it was granted Department of Health (DoH) approval less than a week after it submitted 1,000 specimens for validation.

The Red Cross offices in Mandaluyong and Port Area in Manila are capable of conducting 9,000 tests a day.

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In addition, the Red Cross also pledged that saliva testing will be available nationwide by February and will maintain swab testing, averaging around 42,000 swabs daily, making it the country’s biggest swab tester. It has conducted 1.725 million swabs nationwide, which is 23 percent of the national total.

A far second is Detoxicare Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory, which conducted 529,302 tests, and the state-run Research Institute for Tropical Medicine is third with 400,639.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said other laboratories that intend to do their own saliva tests must get DoH validation. (CC)