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Manzanero: Cayman Tests Not Ideal
posted (April 21, 2020)
Returning now to more COVID-19 update from today's ask the experts session. DHS Manzanero discussed the status with testing, recapping the 170 negative tests in a week, he spoke generally about the availability of supplies for the coming weeks of the COVID response, and the fact that the kits from Cayman might not be an ideal fit.

Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services
"We have done close to 170 tests over the last 6 days. Some days you have a bigger batch going in. I do have to stress that we are, like we had said, we are anticipating that the swabs that we use for doing the testing, and the enzymes that are needed for the testing. - because it's not just the actual tests that you need, but you need the extraction enzymes, the verification enzymes - those should be arriving tomorrow. We did follow up on the Cayman island offer. We spoke with people who are directly linked to the Cayman Islands lab in the Cayman Island, and they indicated that their enzymes for the testing kits that they have, they are on a backlog order that will last six to 8 weeks. So even if we are to produce those kits, our backlog will perhaps be longer than 6 to 8 weeks. So we are going, for now, to keep on with the actual PCR platform testing kits, and hoping that we're getting all those enzymes tomorrow."

"We're anticipating also that some of the equipment that we had paid for PPE's and all those other ventilators should be arriving tomorrow. Even the supplies form PAHO that were supposed to have arrived, the reactions are here, we got 2,500 reactions for doing testing, but the other elements have not arrived."

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