Sorry for lack of updates ... shockingly enough I've been SUPER busy at work. I'm exhausted and actually threw a tantrum yesterday. Worked well - people look away a lot of my non-microbiology work, and the lovely receptionists bought me lunch
People are still very timidly popping their heads into my office and throwing chocolate or asking if I need coffee.
Doesn't help that the media has managed to get my details somehow so I'm doing phone interviews for TV, radio, newspapers etc. I should tell them to send toilet paper then I will talk to them ....
Major points
- More and more labs are developing the testing methods. Unfortunately this means getting all the reagents (chemicals) for the tests is getting harder
- Most labs are closing down their collections centres and making them coronavirus testing only - so if you need a blood test, may be worth checking the website to see if they are still doing general collecting
- We are still working on the blood test to check for previous infection. Singapore and China apparently have these already, but I don't know how good they are.
- The next thing is flu season is rapidly approaching. To this end, most of the labs are trying to develop assays, or buy commercial kits, where you can test for SARS-CoV-2 along with all the usual respiratory suspects (flu, RSV, rhinovirus etc)
- The turnaround time for tests is blowing out TERRIBLY. The numbers of tests are just going through the roof, and no one can get enough testing kits or staff hours to keep up with demand. Yesterday we were apologising for 48 hour turnarounds, today looking like 4 days ....
- Now the most exciting for me is self collections - where you shove a swab up your own nose. A couple of labs under the same parent company are doing some studies where volunteers self collect (this is by scraping their throat, then shoving it up their nose - preferably in that order!) on one side, then the same is done by a properly trained collector. I thought for sure the self collect would be terrible, but initial data seems it's pretty comparable! As with a LOT of equipment (like masks, gowns) the swabs also might run low - so if you can just use one which you collect from 2 sites then that's really cool.