The Min­istry of Health’s threat of pos­si­ble crim­i­nal charges forced one pri­vate med­ical lab­o­ra­to­ry to halt COVID-19 test­ing on Fri­day, spark­ing con­cern that elec­tive surg­eries at pri­vate hos­pi­tals could be post­poned.

The di­rec­tor of the lab­o­ra­to­ry, who asked that both her name and in­sti­tu­tion be with­held, said she sent a no­tice yes­ter­day to the pri­vate hos­pi­tals and doc­tors who use her ser­vices, ad­vis­ing that her fa­cil­i­ty would cease of­fer­ing COVID test­ing pend­ing min­istry ap­proval.

She said doc­tors have been procur­ing her ser­vices to test pa­tients for COVID-19 as part of pre-op­er­a­tion screen­ing. How­ev­er, those pri­vate fa­cil­i­ties have now be­gun post­pon­ing elec­tive surg­eries be­cause pa­tients can­not be test­ed through her lab­o­ra­to­ry.

Her com­pa­ny halt­ed its COVID-19 ser­vice af­ter Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh re­vealed on Thurs­day that the min­istry’s le­gal de­part­ment was look­ing in­to an ad­ver­tise­ment from a pri­vate lab­o­ra­to­ry for COVID-19 test­ing. He said the min­istry is com­pil­ing a file on the mat­ter to send to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

Sec­tion 7.2 of the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance reg­u­la­tions says a per­son or pri­vate med­ical lab­o­ra­to­ry that fails to re­port COVID-19 test re­sults to the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer or re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty com­mits an of­fence and is li­able, on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion, to a fine of $50,000 and im­pris­on­ment for six months.

The lab­o­ra­to­ry own­er said Deyals­ingh’s com­ments on Thurs­day were “con­fus­ing,” since they ap­peared to sug­gest pri­vate lab­o­ra­to­ries could be pe­nalised for con­duct­ing COVID-19 test­ing, not just fail­ure to re­port a pos­i­tive re­sult.

Deyals­ingh has re­peat­ed­ly dis­suad­ed the pub­lic from us­ing lab ser­vices that do not have min­istry ap­proval for this kind of test. Thurs­day’s press brief­ing was the first time he re­vealed any ac­tion is be­ing tak­en against lab­o­ra­to­ries whose COVID-19 test­ing is not ap­proved.

The lab­o­ra­to­ry own­er de­clined to con­firm whether she is seek­ing le­gal ad­vice on the min­is­ter’s state­ment. She said no one in pub­lic health had con­tact­ed her to ex­press con­cern.

None of the four lab­o­ra­to­ries that ap­plied for min­istry clear­ance to con­duct COVID-19 test­ing have been giv­en the green light yet.

The lab own­er said her com­pa­ny ap­plied for min­istry ap­proval of its COVID-19 test­ing in April. She said min­istry of­fi­cials in­spect­ed her fa­cil­i­ty on May 1 but there has been no up­date on her ap­pli­ca­tion since then.

The CEO of a pri­vate health fa­cil­i­ty in west Trinidad al­so yes­ter­day ex­pressed dis­may over the Gov­ern­ment’s stance on pri­vate lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing.

“Pri­vate labs have been func­tion­ing in the coun­try for 20, 30 years and they are far su­pe­ri­or than the lab that the Gov­ern­ment has in place at present,” the CEO said, ask­ing not to be iden­ti­fied.

“Can the Min­istry of Health give you cer­ti­fi­ca­tion? Who is qual­i­fied to cer­ti­fy a lab? That’s num­ber one. Num­ber two is CARPHA is not able to cer­ti­fy any­body, so I’m not sure what they are talk­ing about with ‘cer­ti­fi­ca­tion’.”

COVID-19 screen­ing is now a manda­to­ry part of pre-surgery test­ing for his pa­tients.

“If it comes back pos­i­tive for COVID-19, we will not be do­ing surgery on you,” he said.

“The per­son on the (op­er­at­ing) ta­ble, we have to know every med­ical fac­tor be­hind it for our nurs­es and doc­tors to be com­fort­able op­er­at­ing on some­body. I can’t go find a ra­di­ol­o­gist to­mor­row or an or­thopaedic sur­geon be­cause they get sick. It would shut me down.”

He said any­one con­tem­plat­ing elec­tive surgery in the pri­vate health sec­tor should pre­pare to spend an ex­tra $600 to $2,000 for this screen­ing. His com­pa­ny is in­ter­est­ed in both anti­gen test­ing, which di­ag­noses ex­ist­ing in­fec­tions and an­ti­body test­ing that could in­di­cate whether some­one has re­cov­ered from COVID-19. Doc­tors and nurs­es at his fa­cil­i­ty are test­ed for COVID-19 every two weeks.

The T&T Guardian con­tact­ed both Deyals­ingh and the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) to clar­i­fy the reg­u­la­tions on pri­vate lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing. The CMO did not an­swer or re­turn our phone call and read our What­sApp mes­sage but did not re­spond. Deyals­ingh in­struct­ed us to reach out to his Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions unit, which sim­ply re-sent us the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance reg­u­la­tions and di­rect­ed us to sec­tion 7.