On Monday at the County Annex Building located at 485 W. B Street, Shannon Ernst Director of Social Services, and Jim Barbee Churchill County Manager, welcomed dignitaries and staff from various state and local agencies in a media tour and ribbon cutting for the new State Satellite Laboratory.
“It’s been a long road getting to this point so really this is a celebration and we’re very excited to have everyone here,” said Barbee. “We want to thank all of you – from sitting and talking to the mayor about what the vision on this was, Rob at the hospital, obviously the commissioners, the facility folks whom I drove absolutely crazy, and from a wide-open space and using blue tape on the floor to lay it out, this is something that’s going to have such a dynamic, significant impact in our community and other rural communities across the state. It really is a shift and impactful all around.”
Dr. Mark Pandori from the University of Nevada School of Medicine and Director of the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory said that “Labs are emotional and important to me as a lab director and a person of science,” quoting Louie Pasteur he said, “without laboratories, people of science are soldiers without arms.”
The idea for a satellite lab grew out of frustration during the COVID pandemic as the high demand for testing meant unprecedented long waits for results and frustration with reporting numbers and data throughout rural communities.
During a public meeting in December 2020, Mayor Ken Tedford said the City of Fallon agreed with the idea of a local health district. “This gives a lot better health care for us locally, not regionally. We believe in community health care, not regional. That puts us in local control, not the state level which has caused a great deal of frustration for us in this community.”
At the time, Ernst said the turnaround time for the testing results was seven days. With this state-of-the-art local lab results within 24 hours are now a possibility.
Not only will the lab be used for COVID testing but is built to be forward-thinking with the machines having the ability to be programmed to test for different diseases.
“With the development of the Central Nevada Health District under the leadership of Churchill County,” said Julia Peek, Deputy Administrator for the Department of Health and Human Services, “to have the nurse at the same site as the lab, at the same site as the epidemiologist, I can’t tell you how rare that is, to have all of them in the same building. For residents of Churchill and surrounding counties, they’re going to be able to get their testing processed in real-time and it really does make a difference if you or your family is exposed, and you can find out quickly.”
In addition to the satellite lab, Churchill County is in the process of developing a health district that includes Mineral, Eureka, and Pershing Counties. During the pandemic, because there was no local health district, rural counties relied on the state for testing and other public health needs. During the December 2020 Board of Health meeting, Dr. Tedd McDonald County Health Officer said, “Having a local health district means having local resources and tools to expand health care for this community.”
The new lab will shorten the turnaround time for COVID tests, flu tests, and other public health tests in rural communities including Churchill County.
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