The Department of Health (DOH) said it will be issuing the guidelines in the coming days on how to use the COVID-19 self-administered antigen test kits.
“Meron po tayong policy na ilalabas po natin (We have a policy that we will release) maybe tomorrow or Friday that will state the guidelines. But basically, what you’re going to do is you buy this, you can use it at home, but you need to follow carefully the instructions,” said DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire in an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel on Wednesday, Jan. 26.
“Kasi meron hong technical process dyan kung saan kokolekta kayo ng specimen sa sarili niyo. Kailangan tama, susundin niyo po yung nakalakip na label kung saan nandoon ang instructions (There is a technical process there where you will collect the specimen yourself. It must be correct, you will need to follow the attached label that contains the instruction)," she added.
The guidelines will also include information on how the public can report the result of their test to authorities.
“As to reporting, we are going to include in our guidelines on how they will be reporting or informing their local governments,” said Vergeire.
The DOH spokesperson said that they are also looking at using a “chatbox” for the reporting of test results.
“We are trying to look at this system kung kakayanin po yung capacity that citizens using self-administered test kits will be able to chat in their use and we can be able to get the results and have a sense of how many are being used for these self-administered test kits at home,” she said.
Price cap
Vergeire said that they are also eyeing to impose a price cap on self-administered antigen test kits.
“The basic process for us to have this would be is when it is out in the market, we will get price ranges from the different outlets or license outlets. And then, we try to analyze and work with the Department of Trade and Industry so that we can be able to have a price cap for this,” she said.
“As for the self administered test kits because it has just been recently approved, mag aantay siguro tayo ng isa o dalawang linggo para mapag-aralan maigi ang price range (we will probably wait for about a week or two to study the price range thoroughly) and then we will be issuing out our price caps,” she added.