THE City Government of Baguio started to test the diagnostic system by Huawei to identify “highly probable” cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).
Mayor Benjamin Magalong on Wednesday, March 25, explained three patients under monitoring for possible Covid-19 infection were part of initial tests of the diagnostic system making Baguio the first in the country to try the technology.
“We started with the first three patients and we however experience some technical problems because there are still parts of this systems format that have to be configured. This system will say that a patient has a viral infection, it will not say if a patient is positive for Covid,” Magalong said.
Powered by artificial intelligence, the Huawei Covid–19 CT scan could yield 98 percent accuracy results in two minutes according to Magalong.
The three patients tested negative for viral infection of the lungs with the results to be validated by the Department of Health.
“This system will have to include other parameters. It experience some technical problems because of the speed of the internet, the cloud configured in their system was not compatible with what is configured in the city scan which have to be adjusted remotely by the service provider. There are still some technical problems but generally the performance is good,” Magalong stated.
Other patients started to test the Huawei system which can immediately screen who should go to the containment center or to the isolation room, and who will be sent home.
“We have to think that if the arrival of test kits will be that slow, we need to find someone else who could help us and in this case, it is Huawei. The speed of the result will immediately give the decision maker the idea that we have to start the contact tracing as soon as possible after looking at the results provided for by this system, the key to prevention is the immediate early detection,” Magalong added.