SIX medical technologists and the chief of hospital of the Angel Salazar Memorial General Hospital in San Jose, Antique recently completed a training on molecular techniques for Covid19 testing at the Philippine Genome Center Visayas in the Regional Research Center of the University of the Philippines Visayas.

“This was the first hands-on training under the UP TRAINS 2 Program held at the newly inaugurated PGC Visayas Laboratories. The UP TRAINS 2 Program is a training assistance initiative designed by the National Institute of Health in UP Manila, the National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology in UP Diliman, and the PGC System in Diliman, Visayas, and Mindanao,” UPV said.

The university said the training aims to increase the number of laboratories capable of conducting reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction test for Covid19.

According to UPV, the previous training conducted by PGC Visayas were held at the Center for Chemical Biology and Biotechnology & Center for Natural Drug Discovery and Development of the University of San Agustin, West Visayas State University-Green Technology Business Incubator and the National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology-University of the Philippines Visayas from April 2020 to February 2021.

“This latest hands-on training brought the number of medical personnel trained by PGC Visayas to 80 across Western Visayas,” it said.

The Philippine Genome Center Visayas was established through the Department of Science and Technology project “Enhanced Capability Building in R&D in Genomics” Project 2.

The establishment of the Genomics Consortium and Core Facility in the Visayas was initiated in 2019 of February.