Juneau a testing hub? Assembly to consider buying testing machine<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\nOperating at full capacity for an eight-hour shift Barr said the machine could process up to 380 test samples a day, but that number depends on staffing and supplies. The city currently averages 100-200 tests a day, Barr said.<\/p>\n
“The system requires materials and reagents supplied by Roche to operate,” Barr said. “We are as confident as we can be that Roche will be able to supply these materials and reagents; however, it depends on testing demand worldwide.”<\/p>\n
The machine has applications beyond the ongoing pandemic.<\/p>\n
The Roche machines are standard testing equipment for several forms of viral transmission, said Coleman Cutchins with the Department of Health and Social Services Office of Substance Misuse & Addiction Prevention during a weekly news briefing. Other uses for the machine include testing for tuberculosis, HIV and viral respiratory illnesses.<\/p>\n
“There is quite a bit of utility outside the world of COVID,” Cutchins said.<\/p>\n
Cases are at an all-time high in Juneau, far above where they were in June when the city first considered purchasing the machine, according to city data, and local health officials are working to contract trace two distinct clusters in the community.<\/p>\n
State health officials announced 296 additional cases Thursday bringing the state’s total active cases to 10,512, according to the Department of Health and Social Services, with 89 people currently hospitalized for COVID-19. In Juneau there were 14 new cases and four people hospitalized at BRH, according to CBJ data.<\/p>\n
State and local health officials are having difficulty contact tracing all the active cases, something Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anne Zink has said is critical to managing the virus.<\/p>\n
During DHSS’ weekly update, Zink urged Alaskans to be vigilant in observing health mitigation strategies such as social distancing, masking and limiting one’s social circle.<\/p>\n
“It’s not just contact tracing that we need help with,” Zink said.<\/p>\n
Contact reporter Peter Segall at psegall@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @SegallJnoEmpire.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More uses outside of COVID. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":64963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[703,75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-64962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-coronavirus","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/531"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64962"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=64962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}