~As states open, Premier Medical Laboratory Services provides unprecedented testing capacity for South Carolina~
GREENVILLE, SC May 7, 2020 – Premier Medical Laboratory Services (PMLS), the first commercial laboratory in South Carolina to be validated for COVID-19 testing, has expanded their hours of operation to meet current testing demands. Now capable of processing 20,000 COVID-19 tests per day or up to 620,000 per month, the laboratory has added employee shifts to remain operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Among South Carolina laboratories, this is a groundbreaking amount of test results being processed daily within the state.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, PMLS has progressively increased their testing capacity by adding staff, equipment, and by using cutting edge technology including OnGen, a cloud-based Laboratory Information System (LIS) which allows their testing orders to be entered and communicated directly to laboratory instruments. These measures combined have more than quadrupled the volume of tests that PMLS successfully processes each day.
PMLS’s COVID-19 test is a part of their comprehensive respiratory pathogen test. It is developed to determine the full causation for symptoms that a patient may be experiencing, as COVID-19 can exist as a co-infection. These results deliver vital knowledge – ruling out or detecting multiple causative pathogens and allowing a physician to provide the most suitable care for their patients during this critical time, helping to flatten the curve.
“As everyone prepares for opening up America again, we have adapted quickly so we can be prepared with the level of testing capacity needed for South Carolina,” said Kevin Murdock Founder of Premier Medical Laboratory Services. “We join everyone in wanting this pandemic to be controlled as soon as possible, so we are using the latest in technology and science to meet COVID-19 testing demands as they evolve.”
PMLS is working under FDA regulations to soon provide an antibody test which will indicate a patient that has had COVID-19 in the past and is potentially immune to a reinfection of the virus. As gathering data on COVID-19 to understand its complexities is of utmost importance in overcoming it, PMLS is dedicated to making this antibody test accessible to South Carolina as soon as possible.
As a reminder, Premier Medical Laboratory Services does not conduct specimen collection for their tests. Samples are collected via a specimen collection kit ordered by a healthcare professional and then sent to PMLS for processing. Results of this molecular diagnostic test are provided within 24 – 48 hours upon lab receipt of the testing sample – Lead times subject to extend due to volume.
Hospitals and physicians’ offices can provide COVID-19 testing by clicking on the following link for easy account activation with PMLS: www.premedinc.com/covid-19. For more information, please visit www.premedinc.com or call 1.877.335.2455.