Purpose-built Covid lab to open at  Limerick  hospital in January

University Hospital Limerick consultant microbiologist Patrick Stapleton. Picture: Hospitals Group

A €4m purpose-built Covid-19 laboratory, which will boost testing capacity at University Hospital Limerick by 70%, has been given the green light, under the Government’s national pandemic strategy.

The “emergency construction project” is expected to be open and be operational by the end of next January, and it will increase UHL's existing daily test capacity by approximately 150 tests per day, to around 350 daily tests, a spokesman for UHL said.

He said construction of the "rapid build modular laboratory began in mid-September, and will provide purpose-built physically separated areas for the four stages of testing.

A 'swabbing pod' for staff as well as pre-operative patients was opened on the hospital grounds this week.

UHL consultant microbiologist Patrick Stapleton at UHL, said the current UHL laboratory already operates one of the busiest hospital Covid testing services in the country.

“Staff in the UHL serology and microbiology laboratories, supported by all laboratory disciplines, have built from scratch a Covid testing service that has consistently delivered fast, accurate test results for people attending UL hospitals and for people in the local community,” Dr Stapleton said.

“The recent welcome developments in buildings and equipment will allow our staff to continue to meet the intense demand by automating some labour-intensive steps in Covid diagnostics, and will permit further expansion in test capacity,” he said. 

A centrepiece of the Covid-19 lab will be an Abbott ‘Alinity M’ diagnostic instrument which will facilitate the increase in testing.

When operational, the lab will also house another recently received test platform, the Luminex Aries, “which will provide random access rapid-test capacity”.