COVID-19 Samples Backlog Cleared

Marvin Manzanero

During the press conference today, Director of Health Services Doctor Marvin Manzanero confirmed that the Belize Central Medical Lab has caught up with backlogged samples.  And as reported, rapid testing will now be introduced to ease the burden.  Doctor Manzanero says that the lab technicians managed to catch up with the backlog with the more than three hundred samples processed on Thursday. This is the second highest batch of samples processed to date.

Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services

“The lab has also confirmed with us that they have now caught up with the backlogged of samples that they had, They completed that with yesterday’s three hundred and thirty five samples that they processed which is the second highest amount that they have done in one single day. They are now processing samples from the day before. So they have caught up with all that backlog. The turnaround time we anticipate is going to improve as we go along. Just as a reminder we are using gene expert technology for all those critically ill patients be it in the public or private sector. So once anybody who is critically ill or has a high suspicion of SARSCOV2 those are process through a separate template and the turnaround time is much quicker than the PCR test. Private sector and any public facility will have access to those levels of testing.”