key: cord-0801180-sws6c6ba
authors: Posteraro, B.; Marchetti, S.; Romano, L.; Santangelo, R.; Morandotti, G. A.; Sanguinetti, M.; Cattani, P.; Cacaci, Margherita; De Carolis, Elena; Galuppi, Simona; Giordano, Liliana; Graffeo, Rosalia; La Rosa, Marilisa; La Sorda, Marilena; Liotti, Flora Marzia; Martini, Cecilia; Marturano, Cosima; Masucci, Luca; Menchinelli, Giulia; Nicotra, Rosario; Palucci, Ivana; Rocchetti, Creola; Sali, Michela; Salvioni, Mara; Torelli, Riccardo
title: Clinical microbiology laboratory adaptation to COVID-19 emergency: experience at a large teaching hospital in Rome, Italy
date: 2020-04-21
journal: Clinical microbiology and infection : the official publication of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases
DOI: 10.1016/j.cmi.2020.04.016
sha: da4e2244a38f7d4908736f6119a13aab42ac1f4b
doc_id: 801180
cord_uid: sws6c6ba

nan

To the Editor, 15 When facing the global health emergency of COVID-19 (the illness caused by SARS-CoV-2), as 16 declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) at the end of January 2020 [1] , clinical 17 microbiology laboratories worldwide are ideally asked to refine their diagnostic paraphernalia to Unlike for national reference laboratories, it is difficult for many routine laboratories to tailor 24 and/or redirect daily activity to COVID-19 as rapidly as the person-to-person transmission of 25 SARS-CoV-2 is ongoing. Nevertheless, major efforts are required for those laboratories-as ours-26 serving hospitals that are redesigning their configuration to convert ordinary wards in "COVID" 27 wards as much as possible. Consequently, laboratories are not only asked to early detect patients 28 infected with SARS-CoV-2 but also to confirm COVID-19 cases in order to identify and quarantine In conclusion, our findings support the concept that the clinical microbiology laboratory may be 81 extraordinarily responsive to emergencies like the one we are experiencing. While providing a 82 concrete example on how to expand the laboratory response capacity, we are aware that we have to 83 considerably optimize the response to the COVID-19 impending threat yet. 

World Health Organization, Coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) situation reports

Substantial undocumented infection 99 facilitates the rapid dissemination of novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV2)

SARS-CoV-2 viral load in 102 upper respiratory specimens of infected patients

SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19: The most 104 important research questions

Rapid establishment of 106 laboratory diagnostics for the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in Bavaria

Figure 1. Timeline of median turnaround time (TAT) values for the samples tested for direct 110

Arrows indicate the laboratory's adaptive 111 interventions to the progressively increasing number of samples that took place in the study period

The subsequent interventions consisted into passing to low-(second arrow) or high-throughput 114 (third arrow) systems for viral RNA extraction and PCR assay setup