The company hired by the University of Maine to run its mobile COVID-19 testing lab is helping other state departments and underserved communities keep up with the demand for testing. Shield T3 Health CEO David Clark says the company is processing tests for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services and the community college system and still has extra capacity.
"We have secured the testing supply we need to be able scale in this time of the pandemic when testing needs ebb and flow," he says.
The lab says it can process 10,000 PCR tests per day on the Orono campus and quickly detect known COVID variants, including Delta and Omicron.
"The testing at the UMaine can pick up all variants, now that WHO has identified Omicron, it's important that we have that capability in Maine to identify any of that virus," Clark says.
Any positive cases of COVID must then be sequence tested by the Center for Disease Control to confirm the variant. No Omicron cases have been detected in Maine.
Since July of 2020, the University System has administered more than 200 thousand tests, and detected almost 900 cases of COVID-19.
