**Update**
Our routine maintenance is nearing completion. Unfortunately some of the maintenance overran which has delayed us slightly. We now hope to resume testing on the 19th of September and will begin working through the backlog of samples. Please contact our office team if you would like to use our rabies express testing to prioritise your samples.
Our rabies laboratory will be closed to allow routine annual maintenance from Friday the 18th of August. This is our main maintenance shutdown and we expect the laboratory to return to operational status on Friday 15th September.
Unfortunately, in the run up to this shutdown we have experienced a significant issue with a safety critical piece of plant in our high containment facility. This has prevented us from accessing the unit over the past 10 days and has caused a significant testing backlog. We are pleased to report that our specialist engineering team have worked tirelessly to fix the issue and we are currently setting up tests to clear the backlog of samples prior to our shutdown. The last opportunity for us to set up tests is th 16th of August and we will ensure that as many samples as possible are included on these tests. Any samples not tested will be prioritised when we resume testing on the 15th of September.
We would like to apologise to any customers who have experienced delays due to these recent issues, unfortunately these were due to factors beyond our control. The FAVN test uses infectious rabies virus and as such this work requires the highest levels of containment. Our highly specialist facility is very complex and the containment requirements make it very difficult and time-consuming to perform even the most basic repairs. Naturally containment of virus and safety have to remain our top priority.
Our dedicated admin team remain available to answers any questions you may have and any further updates will be posted on our website and social media channels.