The Covington County Hospital Laboratory Department has been recognized as a 2022 Biosafety Preparedness Champion by the Mississippi Public Health Laboratory (MPHL). This award was presented for participation in the 2022 Biosafety Preparedness Exercise.
The goal of this exercise is to promote laboratory work and increase the communities’ awareness of the efforts of the CCH Lab Department to implement safety measures that reduce the risk to laboratory workers, the community, and the laboratory working environment.
The tests were conducted on the comprehensive metabolic panel laboratory procedure on the Siemens Dimension EXL 200 machine. “We performed a thorough risk assessment on the safety of how these tests are conducted,” said Tanya Magee, MLS (ASCP) Laboratory Director.
These exercises assessed CCH’s ability and dedication to safely handle unknown, highly infectious agents in its laboratory for a potential real-world outbreak and evaluate the risk of any unknown biothreat.
