The governor of Rhode Island, a handful of state scientists, and a flock of reporters walked into an unfinished building in Providence on Tuesday.
Donning hard hats, fluorescent vests, and safety glasses, and corralled by construction workers, the group congregated in the 90-degree heat to tour Rhode Island’s new public health laboratory — an approximately $98 million project three years in the making, and one that state officials say is finally nearing completion.
Gov. Dan McKee invited the press to see the somewhat furnished, but not finished, space that will be home to the Rhode Island State Health Laboratories, which is part of the Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH).
It’s likely the 80,000-square-foot lab space will be finished before the end of summer. About 100 people are expected to use the lab space to monitor a range of nearly invisible threats, from infectious germs to milkborne pathogens to seawater pollutants.
Currently, the health lab is housed in a nondescript administrative building on Orms Street, near the State House. Dr. Louis Marchetti, who leads the state’s Center for Clinical Toxicology and Laboratory Support, joked with reporters that the current facility is “one microwave away from a blackout.”
Still, Marchetti said: “People are really unaware of the technologies that exist within the state lab. While our current building might be old, our instrumentation is not.”
The new health lab is about 20% to 30% bigger than the current space and will have areas for the public to drop off samples for testing, and improved access controls for staff as well as law enforcement who come in to work on forensic samples.
An organic chemistry lab will provide space to analyze PFAS, or the plastics known as forever chemicals. Microbiology space will give insight into the safety of beach water or the health of shellfish beds. Rabies, mosquitoes and meningitis are all within the laboratories’ purview.
The building will also be home to Rhode Island’s only Biosafety Level 3 lab — the highest level of containment afforded only the most dangerous pathogens — although officials stressed that the state will only test local samples, and won’t import hazardous materials. The labs, Marchetti stressed, are not so much about research as they are public health.
State surveillance of infectious diseases has pushed itself to the front of officials’ minds in the post-COVID-19 era. Dr. Glen Gallagher, the director of the State Health Laboratories and the tour’s leader, said the pandemic taught state health officials the importance of being able to pivot. That’s why the new facility includes a flex lab that can accommodate surge testing.
There’s also space for wastewater surveillance, another trend in epidemiology that became something of a household term during the COVID era. Currently, wastewater testing is “squished” alongside other lab activities, said Dr. Richard Huard, who leads RIDOH’s Center for Biological Science Laboratories.
“Everybody goes to the bathroom and takes a shower,” Huard said. “Think of everything that goes into wastewater, from your laundry machine, your shower, your sinks.”
Yet the state’s wastewater-testing tech is so sensitive, Huard said, that it can detect “a little bit of a viral DNA” even in massive volumes of wastewater. This sewer runoff helps state scientists track outbreaks of pathogens like COVID-19 and flu. It also lets the health department warn local hospitals that a new wave or this or that virus may be emerging in the state.
But Huard noted that one category dominates the lab’s day-to-day operations: sexually transmitted infections (STIs). A recent state report found that STIs seem to have returned from their period of hibernation during the pandemic — a time when people were having less sex, and with fewer people, according to public health researchers.
Huard said part of the state’s goal is to return testing results quickly enough to interrupt the spread of these infections, namely chlamydia, gonorrhea, HIV and syphilis, which are the tests most commonly processed by the state laboratories.
“They’re important tests, because once a patient gets a diagnosis and is put on treatment, that’s how you break the chain of transmission,” Huard said.
Prominently planted at the edge of the Jewelry District, a few minutes’ walk from many of the city’s nightclubs and theaters, the building itself is jewellike, encased in terracotta cladding and adorned with slender windows with “playful spacing,” in the words of one design planning document.
Behind the facade, the interior looks modern and airy, with the sterile white of lab spaces emphasized by the light coming in from the elongated windows — something Gallagher appreciated, along with the accompanying city views.
“You can see the space is really open. There’s a lot of windows. So this is really a real improvement,” Gallagher said in the area that will eventually become the STI testing room.
The project was primarily funded by a grant worth $82 million from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Asked by reporters if Gallagher thought the construction funding was endangered under President Donald Trump’s administration, Gallagher said the grant money was secure and has largely been spent.
And it was likely money well spent, as suggested by Gallagher’s answer when asked why Rhode Islanders should care about the building.
“The work that happens here really touches every component of their lives, whether they know it or not,” he told reporters.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
