Staff at Kitchener’s Grand River Hospital have new instrument that will help them process more swabs a day, as testing for COVID-19 continues.

The Seegene Starlet can test 94 swabs every couple of hours.

Eventually, it will allow the hospital to test up to 1,500 swabs each day, meaning faster results.

“Currently, we can process around 66 swabs per day, and most of these are from patients in hospital and health care workers,” John Vanderlaan, Grand River’s Manager of Microbiology said in a release. 

“The hospital and clinics collect approximately 700-800 COVID swabs from the community at the drive-thru COVID test clinic, and from patients in hospital and health care workers. We had been sending most of these swabs to public health or Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital to be processed where it can take 3-6 days to get a result.”

With a second wave of the coronavirus anticipate in the fall, the hospital is trying to increase its capacity to do more in-house testing.

The new instrument is being integrated with hospital systems, which will also mean faster results.

Grand River is set to receive a second Seegene Starlet in early August.

They’re hoping to be able to process around 1,500 tests a day by late August or early September.

In addition to Mount Sinai Hospital, the technology is also being used at SickKids in Toronto.