From a starting point of zero, within weeks, hundreds of volunteers pulled off processing more than 30,000 tests per day – one test every three ...
On the outside, the testing centre resembled a warehouse more than a lab, but an impressive management team including many of the UK’s leading scientists had already been assembled.
Medical staff prepare to test a NHS worker at a drive through NHS COVID-19 testing facility at Hopwood Hall College in Rochdale, Greater Manchester. In the end, the collaboration between permanent staff, scientists, external institutes, private companies and the armed forces made it possible to set up a working lab within a matter of days.The volunteering scientists in my cohort were a diverse crew: Most of us had PhDs and had spent years in scientific research, but we initially shared a common concern that few of us had experience dealing specifically with coronaviruses.
In a positive test the primers “recognise” viral genes and initialise their replication. Hence, when we see more DNA being produced, we know that it must belong to the Sars-CoV-2 virus, and the PCR test returns a positive result. Each cohort received a week of intensive training and by the following week were themselves training the next intake of volunteers under the supervision of a shift leader.
Feeding a robot with samples turned into a process with all the efficiency of a Formula 1 pit stop. One operator takes out the old samples, a second replenishes test reagents and a third loads another 94 samples – 10 seconds, done.Staff direct traffic as key workers arrive for a test for the coronavirus at a drive-in testing centre at Glasgow Airport, as the UK continues in lockdown.
Back in the first week, the manual sample handling process allowed us to process several hundred samples. With more volunteers coming in, this increased to several thousand, and when we roped in robots to help, it quickly reached tens of thousands of processed tests per day. FILE PHOTO: A view of a COVID-19 testing station manned by British military personnel inside London's Hyde Park, Britain, May 8, 2020. REUTERS/ Alexander Smith
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