Govt lab ‘ready to clear test backlog’

The Government public health laboratory, the epicentre of COVID-19 testing, is back to full capacity, and expects to clear the backlog of just over 1,800 results in a matter of days, Minister of Health and Wellness Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Bostic said Monday.

Barbados had finally been able to source the reagent along with a critical binding agent needed for automatic extraction to be conducted at the Best-Dos Santos laboratory, he revealed.

He said Guyana had provided the binding agent, which was expected to arrive on the island Monday evening through the Regional Security System (RSS).

Lt Col Bostic said 6,560 results had returned from the 8,395 cases conducted between February 3 to 14.

Prime Minister Mia Mottley said Government had been able to secure enough of the reagent to allow the lab to carry out testing for the next nine months.

It’s expected that another shipment of the reagent would also arrive in Barbados by Tuesday or Wednesday, Lt Col Bostic added.

He reiterated that health authorities had not been negligent but had ordered the reagent back in September 2020 but owing to high demand, the supplier had been unable to fulfil their order.

He said Government had “done some of everything” to source the reagent, and thought it had successfully secured it.

But when the shipment arrived on the island it was missing a critical binding solution, he said.

Mottley also said storms in the United States were also responsible for the delay in the chemical’s arrival and a delivery bound for the Barbados Consulate in Miami had not reached in time.

But she said its arrival would allow the laboratory to “aggressively go after testing”.

Mottley told journalists: “The immediate nature of our being able to continue the testing programme has been resolved. By the same token what we did and used the opportunities through three different suppliers is to ensure that we have bought as much as we can buy without compromising with respect to its shelf life and to that extent we expect that we will have at least nine months supply of the automatic reagent.

“I trust and pray that after we work on the backlog, which we expect to be able to work off in a two to three day period that we will then be able to get and keep current as we are hoping to do.” (RB)