Lee: Systems being put in place to expand testing

Chief Medical Officer Dr. John Lee has said work is ongoing to begin expanding COVID-19 testing in Cayman.

“It is just a question of getting everything ready,” he said at Wednesday’s daily COVID-19 press briefing.

Cayman has more than 100,000 COVID-19 testing kits at its disposal, which were purchased with the aim of increasing local testing efforts.

This would include testing of frontline workers, such as police and healthcare professionals.

Lee, in response to queries from the Cayman Compass, said testing of residents of homes for the elderly is also “definitely in our sights”.

He said that while the announcement of expanded testing has been made, it has not “escaped my notice either” that it has not started.

However, he said systems are being put in place to make that happen as early as next week.

“It’s a question of training the people to do the testing. They have to be trained to make sure that when they do the testing they don’t actually inadvertently, if somebody is positive, spread the condition. So, those steps take time, they take agreement,” he said.

Those doing the testing, he said, need to learn how to do things safely.

In addition to that, there is the issue of managing the resources available for the expanded regiment of testing, he said.

“We don’t wish to expire our stocks because … if we suddenly test thousands of people … if you need to wear new PPE (personal protective equipment) for every single patient, you’ve suddenly gone through several thousand sets of PPEs. So we’re trying to see if there’s a way we can manage how we do things safely, as well as to conserve our supplies so that they will last for the duration that we need them,” Lee added.

Staffing being addressed

The chief medical officer said government is recruiting people at Health City who are able to the testing, which will address the issue of managing the expanded programme of testing while having limited laboratory staff.

“As well as having trained extra staff to be able to do that at the HSA, there are also a couple of potential recruits to work on the molecular side of things. That’s the most technical aspect of the process,” he said.

“We’re hoping we might at least get one or two of those to assist us so we’re trying across the board to increase that human resource, and we are achieving it, we have added to those numbers,” Lee said.