易胜博官网

The University of 易胜博官网's uniquely designed lab has completed more than听one million tests to detect and monitor the coronavirus. The cutting-edge lab not only performs specifically designed self-swab tests for students, faculty and staff but also plays an important testing role to help provide a safe environment for the greater community by processing tests for more than 125 other groups, including secondary schools, long term-care facilities and other colleges in the state.

鈥淭he 易胜博官网 lab was set up in record time to provide an aggressive way to keep our university community safe and over the past year and a half has grown to be an integral part of the state鈥檚 COVID-19 surveillance as well as a national leader in COVID genomics and a model for collegiate testing,鈥� said Marian McCord, senior vice provost for research, economic engagement and outreach. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a testament to the extensive expertise at 易胜博官网 and the dedication that has played a vital part in helping keep the community safe.鈥�

The inventive laboratory located on the Durham campus runs close to 20,000 tests each week. Set up in the summer of 2020 to exclusively test for COVID-19, it was originally designed to fulfill the university鈥檚 commitment to monitor the student population and quickly identify and prevent any spread of the virus. Now screening is done on all 易胜博官网 campuses鈥擠urham, Concord and Manchester鈥攁s well as for the other institutions in the University System of 易胜博官网 which include Granite State College, Keene State College and Plymouth State University. 易胜博官网 also works in partnership with the 易胜博官网 Department of Health and Human Services to service 45 long-term care facilities, more than 60 elementary and high schools, 15 shelters and several correctional facilities. The on-site testing at grade schools is done through the Safer at School Screening program which serves both public and private schools and does asymptomatic screening at no cost to the schools.

The lab, which has been certified by the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments, or CLIA, is set up to check for COVID-19. Any tests that come back positive and may require further analysis can be sent to 易胜博官网鈥檚 Hubbard Center for Genome Studies, which can identify variants by sequencing the genome of any positive samples.

鈥淚f the state department of public health, or any of our partners, has a sample that comes back positive, 易胜博官网鈥檚 lab can conduct whole genome sequencing on those positive cases to identify the specific variant,鈥� said Kelley Thomas, professor of molecular, cellular and biomedical sciences and director of the Hubbard Center for Genome Studies. 鈥淭he overall goal is to identify cases early to allow for proper care and prevent further spread of the virus.鈥�

The 易胜博官网 testing facility incorporates automation along with a team of skilled lab technicians that work two shifts six days a week. The testing procedure uses what is known as pooled testing where individual samples are combined and tested together to allow for faster results. It is made up of three steps starting with the lab team that receives the test tubes containing samples and scans the assigned barcodes and loads them into the automation. Then a liquid sample is extracted from each swab tube to detect the presence of the virus鈥檚 RNA. If RNA is present, it is isolated and then a specially designed machine, called RT-PCR, performs a multi-plex test where it probes three different areas of the virus鈥檚 genetic makeup to look for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. If a test is positive, 易胜博官网 scientists can genetically sequence samples in the Hubbard Center for Genome Studies.