The Best-dos Santos Public Health Laboratory is preparing for an increase in testing for novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and will get an additional $400 000 in funding from the United States government.
After a tour of the lab on Friday by Chief Medical Officer Dr Kenneth George, US Ambassador Linda Taglialatela, and Centres for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory advisor Giselle Guevara and hosted by lab director Songee Beckles, the latter told the media they had hired more staff to deal with the increasing demands.
“Testing has increased since we started in late February/March. Currently, we have done more than 25 000 tests and the number per month has steadily increased and will continue to increase as we have more visitors.
“As our protocols dictate that persons need be retested while on the island, it means there will be more testing as the months go by.
“We’ve had to hire five additional temporary staff members to complement the staff in the molecular department. We were only running on five persons and we added five more because we actually do testing from 8:30 a.m. when samples come in and the last person leaves around 12 a.m. and even that depends on the volume of samples as some of my staff left this morning at 3 a.m. to ensure we can meet that 24-hour turnaround time,” she said.
Beckles said the lab continued to buy testing kits and necessary supplies and currently had more than 90 000 available and “quite a lot” of swabs.
She expressed thanks to the US Government, the Barbados Government and private donors for their support of the lab.
Taglialatela praised the work of the lab and said Barbados was setting the standard in testing,
She said the Caribbean was doing a “phenomenal job” in general.
The ambassador said the US government had committed to another $400 000 in funding to ensure the lab was able to cope with the increasing demands of the pandemic. (CA)
