Timely tactics to cope with the upsurge in testing volume
KCC COVID-19 Laboratory Testing TeamQueen Elizabeth Hospital / Hong Kong Children’s Hospital / Kwong Wah Hospital
With the rapid onset of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Department of Pathology at Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) immediately adopted different strategy by bringing together colleagues from molecular biology, microbiology and other subspecialities of pathology, as well as medical technologists from Hong Kong Children’s Hospital, to form the nucleic acid testing team to cope with a daily average of over 1,000 testing specimens, alongside the new arrangements in staffing, testing procedures and methods. The team leader and Consultant Medical Microbiologist at QEH, Dr David Christopher Lung, says that the pandemic was swift and thus colleagues could only ‘learn by doing’. Providing the team members the opportunity to bring their expertise into play, they deployed the following four measures to tackle the pandemic.
- Staff training: The number of staff performing nucleic acid testing has expanded from just a few to about 30 to cope with the huge daily testing volume. Round-the-clock testing was provided in the Microbiology Laboratory.
- Programming: Given the various data format and packaging of specimen, the team researched and developed an in-house computer programme to link up the hospitals’ systems with the laboratory equipment and hardware, with a view to enhancing the accuracy of data with standardised, computerised and automated systems.
- Evidence-based: Laboratory data were collected and analysed by clinical professionals to prove that deep-throat saliva specimens could detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the findings were published in medical journals. Such evidences can boost confidence among the healthcare staff, make specimen collection more convenient and help reduce the use of personal protective equipment.
- Analysis of viral strains: Next Generation Sequencing service was applied to analyse the sources of virus, so as to distinguish the cases between nosocomial and community infections, and facilitate the research and development of infection control measures.
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