Grand Turk Lab weeks from completion

#TurksandCaicos, March 15, 2022 – Minster of Health Jamell Robinson in his ministerial statement on Thursday March 10 informed that the sub-lab for Grand Turk should be completed in mere weeks.

The minister announced that recruitment for two additional medical technicians is ongoing but that the building itself should be ready for the National Public Health Laboratory to move in within another week or two.

He is planning a walk through, maybe as early as this week to ensure the site is up to par and ready for the installation of the equipment, which he informed is already on the ground in Grand Turk.

The pandemic has had its pluses in this regard.

The Ministry of Health for the Turks and Caicos has been for many years pushing to have a Public Health lab, now within two years, it will have two of them; both able to churn out results through PCR or Gold Standard Covid-19 testing.

The lab in Grand Turk was promised by the PNP Administration to support the return of cruising for the island, which has bounced back vigorously.  As many as seven ships will call in at the Grand Turk Cruise Center this week alone.

Last year the National Public Health Laboratory buckled under the pressure of an unrelenting Coronavirus pandemic and suffered severe operational issues.  Tests results were slowed and TCIG had to return to sending samples abroad until the Lab was again functioning.  A second lab could be a back-up in an emergency and share the job of producing test results.

Minister Robinson explained the full operational readiness is still waiting for the security system to be set up, retrofitted furniture to be in place and about those all-important sequencing machines he explained, he said:  “A request has been sent off to a single source and we are awaiting feedback.”