The City Government of Valenzuela adds its newest COVID-19 laboratory partner, Hi-Precision Diagnostics (HPD), with the signing of the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) at the ALERT Center Conference Room last May 09, 2020.

HPD is now on the 4^th stage of Department of Health’s (DOH) accreditation process to be a COVID-19 laboratory. Once it has reached its Stage 5 accreditation, it can immediately process swab samples referred by the City Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit (CESU).

“To ramp up our testing capacity, a couple of weeks ago the City Government signed with another private lab partner - Hi Precision Diagnostics... One of the most well known labs in the country. They are now in the final stages of their accreditation process and as soon as they get their stage 5 accreditation with DoH-FDA, they will immediately run our test samples. This brings our lab partners to five (5),” Mayor Rex Gatchalian stated.

The agreement, already the City’s fifth in its set of laboratory partners for the localized targeted mass testing, is expected to bring more capacity to the specimens referred by Valenzuela to its existing COVID-19 laboratory partners – The Medical City (TMC), Detoxicare Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory, Inc., Philippine Red Cross and a private laboratory partner.  

Last April 11, 2020, Valenzuela City officially started its localized targeted mass testing with a stepping stone of 25 tests a day. With its current roster of COVID-19 laboratory partners, the City now refers 275 swab samples daily with a turnaround time of 48 hours for the test results.  

Mr. Lionell Lee, authorized representative of Hi-Precision Diagnostics, signed the exclusive COVID-19 testing partnership with the presence of Mayor REX Gatchalian, City Health Officer Dr. Jaime Exconde and City Pathologist Dr. Amelia Fibra of the City Government of Valenzuela.

Same with the previous COVID-19 partnerships, the City Government of Valenzuela and HPD are both guided with the procedures on specimen collection, Nasopharyngeal (NP) and Oropharyngeal (OP) swab collection, packing and transport of the swab tests.

The localized targeted mass testing since April 11 now records 2,845 test results released, with 275 positive cases and 2,570 negative cases. It is expected that once HPD has received its Stage 5 accreditation, the City can take an additional of 30 swab samples per day.

Valenzuela City now has 231 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of 3:20 pm today, May 22, 2020.