Private company using Eastern Health lab for COVID-19 testing as it awaits accreditation
PCs cry foul over Avalon Laboratories' owner Paul Antle's Liberal connections
Eastern Health denies its COVID-19 testing capacity is being limited by a private company — whose owner has Liberal connections — using the health authority's public laboratory for its own coronavirus testing services.
Avalon Laboratories, owned by businessman Paul Antle, provides COVID-19 testing, at $145 a test, to companies in several industries, including mining, oil and gas, the fishery, and film and television.
Antle says the Department of Health has approved a proposal to let the company use Eastern Health's lab until its own equipment is up and running in and accredited, which he said should happen within "a couple of months."
"This is truly a public-private partnership between government and the private sector," said Antle, who said his company is using Eastern Health's public health lab on a fee-for-service basis.
But the situation doesn't sit well with the Progressive Conservatives.
"This is another example, I guess, of well-connected Liberals, [who] in the last five years, seem to find ways of getting jobs and getting contracts," said PC MHA Tony Wakeham.
Wakeham says all testing should be done by public health instead of a private company.
"We've got significant capacity in our equipment to do testing. So I'm wondering why we would need a private company to do testing if we have the capacity ourselves to do the testing," he said.
'Protecting our economy'
Antle, who ran for the Liberal leadership in 2013 and lost a 2018 byelection to PC Leader Ches Crosbie, says his company's access to the lab is not political.
"This has absolutely zero to do with politics," said Antle, who said his lab has done about 100 tests in the last week and a half, a number he says he expects to grow into the thousands over the coming weeks.
"This is about protecting our economy and protecting the people in our province. And we are doing it right now better than anyone else in the world."
Antle said private testing won't create a two-tiered system in which people could pay for a test even if they're asymptomatic. He likens private testing to testing done by employers to detect drugs and alcohol in an employee's system.
When we test out there for people who are not showing any symptoms and we catch one before they go into an environment where they're in contact with other people, that's wonderful. We have just averted a mini-disaster- Paul Antle
"There're many companies that provide this type of service. They also do blood and urine testing for private companies, drug and alcohol testing, that sort of thing. Those same companies are now doing COVID testing," he said.
"Our swabs go to the public health lab through Eastern Health, they're tested and we get our results online and provide those results to the employer."
In a statement Wednesday afternoon, Eastern Health says the additional testing for Antle's Avalon Laboratories is not taking capacity away from public health COVID-19 testing, noting the demand for public health tests is less than 400 per day, and the lab's capacity is 1,500.
"There is currently no backlog in the lab," reads the statement, which said Eastern Health is charging a fee to recover all costs associated with the temporary testing by Avalon Laboratories. However, the exact amount of that fee was not provided.
"The same support would be provided to other businesses in this situation," says the statement.
Antle says the tests make people comfortable to go back to work.
"There's a huge economic benefit to providing this testing," said Antle.
If COVID-19 made its way to the offshore oilfields, he said, there would be millions in losses each day for companies —and the province.
"So when we test out there for people who are not showing any symptoms and we catch one before they go into an environment where they're in contact with other people, that's wonderful. We have just averted a mini-disaster."
Meanwhile, Wakeham wants more public testing at the province's borders, saying the biggest risk of COVID-19, is importation though travel.
"Maybe it's time we started to look at how we might do some more testing on people arriving in our own province," he said.
It's not about affordability. If you have the symptoms, you can … call 811, and you can get the test done within public health at no cost- Dwight Ball
Asked about the issue at Wednesday's COVID-19 briefing, Premier Dwight Ball said any testing by a private lab does not replace access for the public.
"It's not about affordability. If you have the symptoms, you can … call 811, and you can get the test done within public health at no cost."
He said a private testing company like Avalon Laboratories would see uptake from employers who require workers to be tested as a condition that they can work or return to a job site, as an example.
"But this is not an interference or does not mean that, you know, someone can jump the queue here. If anyone [is] showing symptoms in Newfoundland and Labrador and they want to get tested, well you can make the appointment with public health officials," Ball said.
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