The provincial government is opening a new public health lab in the Georges-L.-Dumont Hospital in Moncton.
While clinical testing was already happening in New Brunswick, this will allow the province to do its own public health testing for the first time, as is done in most other provinces.
“Clinical work in terms of tests are for individual patients, public health work is usually at the population level so surveillance data, we do environmental testing, soil, water … but also animal-originating types of testing so tick-borne diseases and thing likes that,” NB Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Jennifer Russell said on Wednesday.
She said the pandemic highlighted the need to create two streams of test labs.
“The same lab technicians, the same equipment were working on clinical test results at the same time they were working on COVID test results,” she said.
The testing will be used for federal and provincial research, as well as to help prepare the province for possible future health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Eleven new staff will be recruited, and fifteen staff members from the existing microbiology lab will be transferred upon its completion, estimated to be in 2024.
The lab will occupy a space in the Dumont’s basement which is currently being used as part of the Université de Sherbrooke’s Faculty of Medicine.
Stéphane Legacy, Vitalité’s vice-president of outpatient and professional services explained: “It’s mostly classrooms that we have there that we will need to move to another area that will need to vacate the space in order to make room for the public health lab.”
The new lab is expected to occupy 10,000 square feet of space and cost an estimated $10 million.
As of yet, the government has not taken a stance on what will happen with other testing labs in various hospitals in the province.
Health minister Dorothy Shephard said on Wednesday: “We still need clinical labs and so as we proceed, we will be working with our regional health authorities to see what we need to keep where and what their roles are.”
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