Coronavirus testing in San Miguel County is on standby as local health officials say they’re committed to partnering with United Biomedical Inc., a New York-based bio-pharmaceutical company.
“As UBI continues to work diligently to supply results, the county is standing by to resume testing when appropriate,” San Miguel officials said Thursday in a news release.
Last month the county announced it would partner with UBI to test all of its residents for the coronavirus using a blood draw instead of the widespread method of administering oral and nasal swabs. On Tuesday, county officials said testing was halted because of “unexpected delays” in processing initial samples from residents.
The county and UBI “remain united and committed to processing tests and initiating a second round of testing,” the latest news release said.
UBI is doing the testing free of charge. The company has delivered almost 2,000 initial results to county officials. San Miguel had a population of 7,359 in the 2010 census.
“UBI’s lab is experiencing the same staffing and supply challenges due to COVID-19 that the entire world faces, but they are committed to producing the results as quickly as possible” the county’s news release said. “Any delay will not invalidate any of the testing data.”
Mei Mei Hu, UBI’s chief executive officer, said in the release that the company anticipates delivering expanded test results to the county and it looks forward to the “second round of testing.”
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