So when
someone goes to a site to get a collection or if someone is collected at the ED
or in the hospital, those samples will make their way to our laboratory.
If it is is at a site,
they'll be shipped to us via courier.
So in a courier car that can take a little while, depending on when the
site closes and how long it's been open and how many drops they do during the day.
Once that specimen arrives in the laboratory,
it is what we call received in.
That means that we confirm that we've got it.
It helps people to know that samples that have been collected
made it to where they're supposed to be.
Some of it is depending on where you get
tested, the courier and the amount of time
that it takes the courier to get here is going to play into turnaround time .
The most important thing that really plays
into turnaround time issues is registration
when they register for a COVID test, when you put your name on a label.
The most important thing you can do is to use your full legal name
because a lot of times somebody will put a nickname
middle name instead of a first name.
And so then when that comes into the laboratory,
we have trouble finding the patient and who that test belongs to
because the name was incorrect.
Once it is received in it,
then is going to be aliquoted for whatever machine we place it on.
Luckily, most see we have several different options of platforms
that we can use, and we do utilize all of those platforms,
especially in a surge like we've seen recently.
So, aliquot just means that we take it, take the sample from the tube where it was
collected and place it into a second tube that is machine specific.
Platforms are instruments.
So in the laboratory community,
we refer to our instruments lovingly as platforms.
When that specimen is received in the laboratory and is then aliquoted
it's going to be set aside for the machine that it's going to run on.
We run it on the machines as quickly as possible.
Our two major workhorse machines for the laboratory
are random access, meaning that we can continually load them.
Once loaded on the machine the sample will have the nucleic
acid extracted, meaning that the virus is separated out.
Then we do a nucleic acid amplification or PCR assay.
And that's actually going to amplify that virus if it's present in the sample.
So if the virus is present in the sample, it will be detected as positive.
If it is not detected in the sample, then it will be nondetected
or a negative sample.
Those results automatically interface with our electronic health record,
and so the results are immediately
released into the health record and then can be sent out via Mychart.
It's all about trying to get the results out as quickly as possible.
The sooner that people know whether or not they're positive, the sooner
they can take countermeasures to try and keep those people around them safe.
My team is amazing, but they are basically we're here 20 47.
A lot of our peak time is overnight
while many people are sleeping in bed we are busy
aliquoting or pouring
off those samples and getting those results out.
I know that testing can seem really frustrating right now
because everybody wants to know whether or not they have COVID.
But I guess for me, the most important piece of advice is
if you don't feel, well,
isolating yourself until you know whether or not
you may be sick with COVID is is really the best option.
And I know that's hard sometimes given our lives and
and some of us don't have the luxury of being able to
to take that time to to be careful and so we have masks.
N95s KF94s is like,
I have all really good choices because they're higher grade
and so they can help control the virus spread.