Outbreaks of respiratory infection: preparing for future uncertainty

Efficient infectious disease testing for a variety of viral and bacterial illnesses is essential at any healthcare facility, allowing infected individuals to be effectively isolated while ensuring that all patients can access treatment as quickly as possible. However, the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic put unprecedented pressure on hospital pathology and microbiology laboratories to deliver fast turnaround times for infectious disease testing.

               The magnitude of nosocomial virus spread became a horrifying reality, accounting for more than 15% of cases in UK hospitals by May 2020.¹ To prevent this from progressing further, healthcare staff had to act quickly to find ways to test and isolate SARS-CoV-2-positive patients, while trying to maintain a high standard of patient care for all admissions.

               Infectious disease testing for University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) NHS Trust, South Warwickshire University NHS Foundation Trust (SWFT) and George Eliot Hospital (GEH) NHS Trust is centralised at the Coventry and Warwickshire Pathology Services (CWPS) laboratories. However, when the pandemic hit, there was a need for rapid SARS-CoV-2 testing at each trust, in order to prevent nosocomial transmission and get patients to treatment sooner. A temporary molecular diagnostics ‘hot lab’ was set up at UHCW using a GeneXpert system from Cepheid, with two additional instruments at the other sites, to test symptomatic patients for COVID-19.