Ministry of Health Donates PCR tests

Ministry of Health is pleased to announce that the last of the Seasun Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing kits acquired around a year ago have been donated to the Ministry of Health in Jamaica and the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) in Trinidad. CARPHA is the single regional public health agency for the Caribbean and has been a great source of assistance to the Cayman Islands in various aspects of public health over the years.

Thirty-six thousand (36,000) kits for Jamaica were dispatched this morning, and the remainder to Trinidad will be sent shortly. Around 78,000 kits were shared between these two agencies. These kits’ expiry date is the end of April 2021 and the laboratory at the Health Services Authority will be unable to use the number remaining before their expiration. This donation does not create any shortage of test kits for Cayman.

Premier, Alden McLaughlin, JP, MBE, said, “The purchase of these test kits has really helped Cayman in our mass screening programmes enabling us to open up our local economy, getting people back to work, students back to school and people back to living their lives. Sharing these test kits with our friends and neighbours who can use them to help save lives is beneficial to all of us.”

Minister of Health, Hon Dwayne Seymour, JP, added, “Cayman has been very fortunate to have been able to develop robust and scalable PCR testing capabilities early in the pandemic. This has really helped in our mass screening programmes and our work to keep the threat of this highly infectious disease under control. We remain very grateful to Mrs. Susan Anne Olde, OBE who jointly purchased these kits with the Government. We are thankful we are able to assist others in the region in their fight against this ongoing global threat.”