THE Bacolod City Government has launched the first Biosafe Swab Mobile on Thursday, May 7, which is necessary to enhance swab testing in the midst of the coronavirus plague.
Bacolod City Mayor Evelio Leonardia, Bacolod Representative Greg Gasataya and councilors Renecito Novero, Archie Baribar, Ana Marie Palermo, Bartolome Orola joined the benefactors of the swab mobile namely the Bacolod Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Chamber Volunteer Fire Brigade, Bacolod Filipino-Chinese Junior Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Willy Au, Alfredo Barcelona, Alfonso Choa, James Chua, and Romie Cortez in the blessing and inauguration of this Swab mobile as witnessed by the Department of Health representatives led by Dr. Julius Drilon who heads the DOH Covid Action Response Team and Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital Medical Center and City Health Officers Dr. Carmela Gensoli and Dr. Grace Tan.
“With the help of the private sector, we are assured that we are not alone in this fight,” Leonardia said.
The Swab Mobile initiative began with the mayor’s daughter Kara Leonardia in partnership with Joseph Saril, a mechanical and biomedical engineer with 20 years of experience in creating biosafe laboratories and facilities in Asia and the Pacific. Saril decided to come home to Bacolod last year and by coincidence, he was introduced to Kara while she was working on a sanitation chambers just on April.
Saril shared that with the use of the swab mobile during the SARS outbreak, it indeed helped protect health workers from being exposed unnecessarily during specimen extraction.
Kara initiated the project after she was alarmed by the growing number of doctors and nurses who succumbed to Covid-19.
Mayor Leonardia, for his part, thanked his daughter, the benefactors and Engineer Saril for making this project possible.
“Engineer Saril had earned the expertise and experience that became beneficial to other countries and we are fortunate that he came home just right on time. In the whole Philippines, we initiated this first biosafe swab mobile. Others may copy this but the original belongs to Bacolod City,” he said adding that “this will help us do the swab testing in the barangay.”
“We prevent possible carriers from going around [since] they can infect others too. With this mobile facility, this can go to the community where the patients or the possible carriers live. But of course, the most important thing is the safety of our health workers who are manning the swab tests. We don’t want to see a spectacle where our health workers will be endangered. That is already too much for them where they are the ones helping us cure the patient but, in the end, they are affected too,” he said.
Mayor Leonardia said the bio laboratory which is currently being built at CLMMRH is expected to be operational in June and it can do swab testing of about 150 tests just for a start and eventually, it can test up to 400 a day.
“This biosafe swab mobile can help declog the possible queueing of patients who will undergo swab testing in the near future,” the mayor said.
Bacolod Representative Greg Gasataya said this mobile facility can help Bacolod in fighting Covid-19. He added that this is timely as the national government aims to conduct massive mass testing by the end of the month.
He thanked the benefactors for this assistance.