Hamilton County has ended its agreement with Baylor School's lab to test COVID-19 samples, according to Baylor spokeswoman Barbara Kennedy.
An emailed statement from Kennedy reports the partnership between the local preparatory school and the county was coming to a close based on their contract that began in March.
"The county has notified the school that they are now in a position to use a larger lab facility and gave us an official notice that our services are no longer needed. It was an honor to help the community with COVID-19 testing and we were able to process more than 14,000 tests through the partnership," Kennedy said.
Hamilton County entered into the unique partnership with Baylor on March 25 - when labs across the country were overwhelmed and processing times for COVID-19 tests could take over a week - in order to cut the local coronavirus diagnostic test result time to a matter of hours.
A statement emailed Thursday by Hamilton County Health Department Administrator Becky Barnes says that the area's testing needs are "greater than the capacity at the Baylor lab," which could process around 300 tests per day.
"The state has offered to run all of our community testing at either the state lab or private labs they have contracts with. This will give us expanded community testing in Hamilton County," Barnes said.
Kennedy said the school will now turn its attention toward a safe reopening of the campus.
"Because of our lab and expertise, we are extremely well prepared and will be able to provide rapid turnaround testing for our students and employees," Kennedy said, adding that the Baylor research scientists who spearheaded the testing effort plan to continue testing COVID-19 samples from vulnerable populations by serving Clinica Medicos and the county's Homeless Healthcare Center.
Contact Elizabeth Fite at efite@timesfreepress.com.