The Crane Resort in St Philip has set up a state-of-the-art laboratory for COVID-19 testing.
Making the announcement to the media on Tuesday, Minister of Tourism Senator Lisa Cummins said the private facility “is going to allow Barbados to diversify away from having all results, both inbound and outbound going to a single facility, and allow us to have an additional capacity made available to us”.
She added the new lab had been certified as functional and was already working in collaboration with the Ministry of Health.
“They are fully equipped and licensed by the Ministry of Health to provide COVID-19 PCR tests in line with the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines,” Cummins said.
She added the testing services were not limited to visitors staying at the Crane, and Government was working collaboratively with the Crane to ensure that “all visitors, anyone who wants to choose whether they are going to the private system or the public system, will be given the opportunity to choose”.
Cummins also disclosed a second private testing lab was in the process of being set up, though not in a hotel, and should be going into operation by the end of this month or early next month.
The two additional labs are expected to take some of the load off the
Government-established Best-dos Santos Public Health Laboratory which has been bearing the strain of testing ever since the COVID-19 pandemic reached Barbados. It was one of the first labs in the Caribbean to acquire test kits and reagents for COVID-19 detection. (GC)