Deeside to get 10,000 a day Covid-19 test lab

A laboratory capable of processing up to 10,000 Covid-19 tests a day is set to open in Deeside next month.

The fully staffed “semi-permanent” lab will situated at the Covid-19 test site on Deeside Industrial Estate.

The lab will be housed within a container at the test site which is located next the Toyota Engine plant and will form part of a mass testing programme.

In a cabinet statement published today, Vaughan Gething MS, Minister for Health and Social Services said:

“I want to take the opportunity to update Members on how Wales is planning to benefit from the development of new technologies in Covid-19 testing.”

“New testing technologies could potentially, enable population surveillance, enable more active case finding and reduce turnaround times enabling contact tracing to commence at pace to isolate contacts faster.”

He said: “More regular testing as a means of enabling greater normality to life while preventing transmission.”

Nearly 11,000 tests were carried out across the whole of Wales on Wednesday, 329 of those were in Flintshire.

Since the start of the pandemic just over 1.2 million test have taken place in Wales.

Mr Gething said: “Together with the other Devolved Governments we are working with UK Government on the new technology developments as part of the mass testing programme.”

“Wales will be allocated a population share of the new technologies available under the programme.”

The health minister said: “The mass testing programme includes a number of lab developments, one programme provides a fully staffed and operational semi-permanent laboratory within a container that can process up to 10,000 tests per day.”

“Wales has one for the first phase roll-out and this will be located at the Deeside Regional Test Site with a planned soft launch, subject to successful completion of the validation process, in early December.”

[Photo: Deeside Test Site – by DronePics.Wales and used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence]