The COVID-19 test kits that the Department of Health (DOH) acquired through the budget agency’s procurement service had a standard shelf life and were not nearly expired, the agency department said on Saturday. 

“The COVID-19 RT-PCR test kits with six months shelf life are not near expiry, as that was the standard shelf life of those novel diagnostic test kits at the time,” DOH Undersecretary Charade Mercado-Grande said in a statement. 

The health agency made the statement after Sen. Francis Pangilinan questioned why the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) bought test kits with a shelf life shorter than the specification provided by the DOH. 

The DOH said that for the initial procurement of test kits, the RT-PCR kits should last for 12 to 24 months. The specification was based on similar procurements prior to the pandemic. 

“As COVID-19 is a novel disease, the test kits used to detect the virus were only developed in the early months of 2020. Back then, real-time RT-PCR test kits that were available in the market had a shelf life of only six months,” the department said.

“The DOH acknowledged that these products have a short shelf-life and accepted the deliveries with this limitation.”

The DOH also said the COVID-19 test kits that PS-DBM procured from Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp. were delivered on a “staggered basis.” 

It added that the agency only purchased test kits that passed the evaluation of the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) and were at par with the standards of the World Health Organization.