Province posts contract for COVID lab test supplies

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This article was published 01/12/2020 (1950 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE Manitoba government is seeking to secure a three-year contract to keep up with the supply of COVID-19 lab-testing materials.

The Cadham Provincial Laboratory needs substances and materials used to test for COVID-19, including reagents, viral RNA isolation kits, buffers, and other types of solutions used to process lab samples, according to a public tender notice posted Monday.

A list of more than 60 sought-after lab supplies is included. The contract is expected to be in effect from the middle of January 2021 to the end of November 2023.

“The tender was posted for a facility-wide assortment of supplies that are used for molecular testing, and includes supplies for testing that is performed in the microbiology, perinatal chemistry, and virus detection sections of Cadham Provincial Laboratory,” a provincial government spokesperson said Tuesday in an email.

“Due to the high volume of supplies required for the provision of public health laboratory services, Cadham Provincial Laboratory is in the practice of tendering for multi-year contracts, as this allows for potential cost savings related to high-volume usage.”

Cadham, as well as the Health Sciences Centre and Saint-Boniface Hospital labs, are the only public labs processing COVID-19 test swabs in Manitoba, with private lab Dynacare taking on some of the workload. A ramp-up in Manitoba’s testing capacity was planned over the past few months; the province opened two more nasal-swab testing sites within the past month.

On Monday, 2,253 tests were completed, down from the province’s daily target of 3,000. Earlier in November, just before the government imposed code red restrictions provincewide, daily tests reached a record high, as new cases of the virus climbed to some of the highest per capita rates in Canada.

For the week of Nov. 11, an average 3,878 tests were being conducted per day, according to data compiled by the federal government.

Rapid testing devices that can show results within minutes were recently set up in northern Manitoba communities, as well as two of those devices at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg.

On Tuesday, chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin said Manitoba is trying to figure out how best to use panbio antigen rapid tests, which he said are not as sensitive as current PCR lab tests and are more likely to result in false negatives.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay