MANILA - Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said Thursday he was pertaining to the pilot run of COVID-19 pooled testing when he referred to Metro Manila as a "living experiment" in the government's pandemic response.

Roque on Wednesday drew flak for saying that "Metro Manila will be a living experiment and it’s an experiment that we believe we can be successful at, and it will be something that we can be proud of."

The Palace mouthpiece acknowledged that he may have used the wrong term to describe the pilot run of pooled testing in the capital region.

"Pagdating po doon sa experiment, ang dapat po siguro ipa-pilot na natin 'yung tinatawag natin na pooled testing that will increase by 10 times our testing capacity," Roque said in a Palace press briefing.

(When it comes to the experiment, it should be a pilot of pooled testing that will increase by 10 times our testing capacity)

"Siguro hindi nga tama 'yung word na experiment pero hindi pa kasi natin nagagawa itong pooled testing sa Pilipinas," he added.

(Maybe the word experiment was wrong but it's because we haven't done pooled testing in the Philippines before.)

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With pooled testing, samples from a group of individuals would be tested as one.

If the results come back negative, everyone in the group is cleared of COVID-19. But if the results return positive, each individual will be tested separately for the virus.

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The pilot run is already being conducted with the help of the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine and the private sector, testing czar Vince Dizon said.

"'Pag ito ay na-validate na ng RITM at DOH (Department of Health) ay puwede na natin gamitin ito," Dizon said.

(Once this is validated by RITM and DOH, we can already use it.)

By employing pooled testing, the Philippines can lower the cost for it and could detect the virus faster among more people, he added.

The Philippines already has the capacity to run over 50,000 COVID-19 tests per day but this has yet to be maximized.

On Wednesday, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Philippines climbed to 85,486, of which 56,528 are active.