31 RITM personnel recover

from COVID-19
By CNN Philippines Staff
Published Apr 25, 2020 7:38:17 PM

Thirty-one laboratory personnel at the country's primary testing facility who

earlier tested positive for the coronavirus disease have returned to work after
recovering from the viral illness, a health official said Saturday. (FILE PHOTO)

Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 25) — Thirty-one laboratory

personnel at the country's primary testing facility who earlier tested
positive for the coronavirus disease have returned to work after
recovering from the viral illness, a health official said Saturday.

Health spokesperson Ma. Rosario Vergeire reported that 31 of at least

40 staff members of the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine that
contracted COVID-19 have already received two negative test results.
Meanwhile, nine are still waiting for the results of their second test,
which will either come Sunday or Monday, while staying at the
center's dormitory, Vergeire said.
She reiterated that the frontliners did not contract the deadly disease
from processing samples of patients.

"One staff (member) who goes home everyday, and then when she got
back to RITM, was able to expose and infect the others and this was
through the common activities that they do, but not necessarily the
laboratory processes," the spokesperson told CNN
Philippines'  Newsroom Weekend.

She said the RITM hopes to augment its current testing capacity of
2,700 tests daily with the return of the personnel, provision of more
machines and recruitment of more health workers. Vergeire said they
are working on getting more laboratory staff to join RITM since the
center requested a force of 400 people to help with processing
samples.

"We would be providing them with the next set of workers as we get
volunteers being enlisted in our database," she said, adding that the
Health Department had just sent RITM more encoders.