WHILE many were busy worrying and getting anxious about the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), local scientists have quietly developed a means to detect the virus.

At the halls of the University of the Philippines-National Institute of Health (UP-NIH), scientists have developed the Sars-CoV-2 detection kit. Sars-CoV-2 is the official name given to the novel coronavirus by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses.

On Monday, the agency issued a Certificate of Exemption for the Sars-CoV-2 PCR Detection Kit. FDA, in a press added that the detection kit “will be used for field testing coupled with gene sequencing at the Philippine Genome Center.”

Beyond being a positive development during the time of Covid-19, this is also a milestone to the scientific community in the country.

Despite their discoveries and findings, scientists in the Philippines are not given much love as they deserve from society. Filipino scientists have quietly worked and made research on numerous things but are seldom heard of.

We only know what our scientists have been doing when a press release is out or makes international headlines.

Our scientists are able to come up with inventions and technology that will benefit the Filipino people and global community as a whole. What they need now is support from the government and various sectors that could fund them.

Science and technology played part in the advancement of many nations. It is among the factors that makes a first world country, a first world country.

It is also depicted in fiction that states or empires with advanced technology are those that allowed it to become powerful. For example, Atlantis in DC Comics and Wakanda in Marvel Comics.

In the real world, we saw how civilizations advance when fire was discovered. When irrigation was discovered, civilizations were able to sustain its people.

Hence, not having a need to transfer from one place to another. When humans learned to fly, with the development of technologies in aviation, it allowed the seamless flow of people and goods.

History would show that any nation or civilization that is able to take advantage of science and technology and use it properly would usually have the upper hand.

The Philippines needs to support its scientific community more -- not only the government but the Filipino people too. We have to uplift our scientists to encourage them to develop new technologies that would benefit us.

We commend our scientists and the team who developed the Sars-CoV-2 detection kit. We hope this will encourage more Filipino scientists to continue to develop technologies that are proudly Filipino-made. We hope Filipinos and the government will give them the support they need for research and development.