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Flu Cases
“This is one of the highest points with regards to people needing health care because of flu since 2009,” says MUSC Health infectious disease specialist.
A behind-the-scenes tour of COVID-19 testing at MUSC Health at the Medical University of South Carolina revealed a tightly regulated process that churns out about 850 test results a day and has the capacity to ramp up for a surge of cases.
“The testing process is highly complex,” said Frederick Nolte, Ph.D., vice-chairman for the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and medical director for both clinical laboratories and the molecular pathology lab. “There are a lot of moving parts. Specialty expertise is required to pull this off successfully.”
That expertise was on display on a tour that began in an area marked “Laboratory Central Receiving.” It’s where thousands of nasal samples collected for testing arrive via courier, FedEx, and in the case of patients who are hospitalized at MUSC Health, an internal tube delivery system.
At least a dozen people, from medical technologists to pathologists, took it from there. In-house testing at MUSC Health is now running seven days a week to keep up with the demand for COVID-19 results.
The testing requests come not only from MUSC Health but also multiple hospitals, medical centers and patients across the state.
Clinical lab assistant Sara Shealy was working in the entry area, getting the samples logged in. Clinical lab scientists Nancy Leonard and Pauline Nelson then prepared the samples for analysis and routed them to the lab for nucleic acid extraction to determine whether they were infected with the coronavirus that causes the illness COVID-19.
“We have a great team, everybody’s risen to the occasion,” Nolte said.
He emphasized the importance of making sure the MUSC Health lab has multiple options for testing. That way, if one goes down, they have alternatives. “Right now, we’re in a pretty good position in terms of handling the volume of testing in the clinical labs,” Nolte said.
“We’ve gotten tremendous support from the hospital administration. Basically, from the top down, they’ve said, ‘Just tell us what you need, and we’ll get it to you,’ and that’s happened.”
The lab leadership team is talking with MUSC researchers about using some of their equipment for testing if needed. “We’ve identified the laboratory space, the instrumentation, the assay (test) that we’re going to use. That would be another pivot point for us, should we have to activate that part of the contingency.”
“This is one of the highest points with regards to people needing health care because of flu since 2009,” says MUSC Health infectious disease specialist.
MUSC offers first-known combo of telehealth screening and drive-through specimen collection to address potential exposure to and spread of the coronavirus.