Illustration of design for Covid-19 laboratory testing centre in Sihanoukville. Chinese Embassy
The Chinese embassy in Phnom Penh said a large Covid-19 laboratory testing machine donated by China will arrive in Preah Sihanouk province as early as April. Cambodia plans to install three more of these testing machines to serve areas with high exposure to the virus.
In a Facebook post, the embassy said that in addition to the testing machinery they would send a team of experts to Cambodia to help set up the machines and train people to use them.
“After the installation of this test machine in a laboratory, the samples from Preah Sihanouk, Kep, Kampot and other nearby provinces will be brought there and this will enable Cambodia to accelerate its testing,” the embassy said.
Ministry of Health secretary of state York Sambath said the ministry would begin using two of these polymerase chain reaction testing machines to detect Covid-19 right away and that they expected one more of them to arrive next month.
“Two large Covid-19 testing machines will arrive in Cambodia soon. The first machine will arrive next week and will be installed at the National Blood Transfusion Centre. The other is scheduled to arrive on April 19 and will be installed at the National Institute of Public Health,”she said.
Sambath said the third testing machine that would be installed in Preah Sihanouk province will speed up the testing of people’s samples for Covid-19 for the southern coastal region. On March 29, a team of experts from China were due to arrive in Cambodia to help with the installation.
Dr Hen Pheareak, an expert in respiratory tract infections, told The Post the assistance of partner countries, especially China, was a positive sign because Cambodia still has shortages of medical materials.
Pheareak said China was knowledgeable about the infection and knew how to manage it and this assistance would help find the sources of infections and contain them.
“China understands the situation. If our testing is slow, then it will be difficult to control the disease. Right now our priority must be to increase our testing capacity and efficiency so that we can get test results back quickly for any location and then things will improve,” he said.
Pheareak said that in response to the February 20 community outbreak, Cambodia should create more laboratory capacity in the provinces as soon as possible to ensure that sample testing and results can be processed faster.
“Based on the ministry’s data, our country is handling this situation better than many other countries. But our next step must be to enforce the law. We can’t be lax in enforcing it because if we hesitate we’ll have a stronger outbreak of the virus,” he said.
