Director of Laboratory and Pathology Chad Williams: COVID-19 Test on Way with Results in Less than Hour
By Julie Perine on April 05, 2020 via Connect-Bridgeport.com
Why does it sometimes take so long to get COVID-19 results back? It depends, said Chad Williams, Director of Laboratory ad Pathology at United Hospital Center-WVU Medicine, upon when you were tested.
“LabCorp and Quest were the first to get the testing available and they started at one of their lab locations at first, right when the Coronavirus cases began to show up,” he said. “This led to a bottleneck of samples that they are behind on testing. When we started sending to them, the
turnaround time was three to four days. Right from the start, the TAT jumped to seven to 10 days. The good news is that both LabCorp and Quest have expanded the testing to other lab locations and some of our recent samples are back to three to four days.”
turnaround time was three to four days. Right from the start, the TAT jumped to seven to 10 days. The good news is that both LabCorp and Quest have expanded the testing to other lab locations and some of our recent samples are back to three to four days.”
Drive-thru testing – the collection of an upper respiratory specimen and a Nasopharyngeal specimen- conducted at UHC continues to be processed through third-party laboratories, but processing is now being done, on a limited basis, at WVU Medicine Ruby Memorial Hospital.
“We are sending emergency department and inpatient testing to them,” Williams said. “The testing is trickling down to the hospitals throughout the country. Our currently molecular vendor is Cepheid and they are sending the testing reagents to hotspots throughout the globe, including the U.S. first. We are hopeful to be able to test here at UHC within a few weeks.”
Testing coming to UHC will enable the lab to produce results in 45 minutes, he said.
The staff at the UHC lab that processes samples do so in an air flow microbiological safety cabinet and are protected with proper gear.
“We have various categories of possible exposure,” Williams said. “The types of protective gear include gloves, surgical masks, N95 masks, eye protection, face shields, gowns, PAPR (battery-powered blower that provides positive airflow)and CAPRs.”
Williams said the UHC lab is very busy and everyone is working very hard.
“We have a great team here at UHC and our mission is to care for our patients,” he said. “As always, everyone has stepped up to care for our patients and each other. The community is showing a lot of support for us and this has helped tremendously with morale and dedication at this trying time.”
