This has been copied and pasted from Dr Rant on Facebook. This is important to share as the government has claimed that it will test more. I suspect that this will be testing for antibodies and from what I understand, while the test can give answers in 15 minutes, it can take up to 28 days to develop the antibodies which means that I will not be able to be tested before Tuesday which means that I will not be returning to work early.
Dear Readers. I've had a message in a bottle (stool sample bottle, actually) from BMS Rant, a distant relative who runs an NHS laboratory. This is regarding the Government's assumption that there is spare space in labs, and that they are all twiddling their thumbs...
"I'm so angry at the coverage regarding testing.
Labs don't have spare space. As a service, we have been understaffed and underfunded FOR YEARS. We've been forced into consolidation of workload across 29 central sites as a result of a top-down re-organisation of pathology. There are dozens of small labs across the country that have been stripped of the ability to carry out all but the most urgent of tests, resulting in the loss of lab space, expertise, equipment and staff! Now take a stripped back pathology service and add a pandemic! FUCKING MAGIC!
Do you know why your COVID tests are taking ages? They're being put in a van and taken to the local "big lab". My local big lab is running the COVID tests for at least FIVE hospitals, and their attached local areas. What the FUCK do you think is happening in labs like that? I don't know the exact number of testing labs, but 15,000 tests across 29 sites is nearly five hundred a day, rising to nearly 1000 if we make good on the government's target. And these labs haven't randomly acquired extra analysers capable of testing for COVID, or randomly acquired enough experienced BMSs to run brand new, technically intricate tests, or that they're not having to self-isolate, or going down with COVID themselves from handling these things. The rest of the workload hasn't magically disappeared either!
I'm lucky. My small lab is in the process of being closed, so we have two analysers capable of testing. The government haven't taken them yet. But here's the thing - this is a brand new virus. There are many different suppliers of test kits out there. Your current analyser determines the test kits you can run. And everyone and his dog wants COVID testing at the moment, so there are supply issues. And even when you've sourced a kit for your analyser, you can't just run a test for a brand new virus without proving that it does what it says it does! In other words: false positives and false negatives! That process takes time and remember - we're stripped of staff, resources, time etc. etc. etc.
My little lab is in the process of validating one test from one supplier right now. But it might not work - after all, it's brand new! It might be better to send stuff up to the big lab for a better result. After all, what's the point in running a test that's going to call your COVID positive patient negative? So which is worse - have a shit result now, or a safe result in 24 hours?
Labs aren't lazy, or inefficient. We're just as fucked as the clinical areas - trying to do our jobs safely and efficiently, after years of being squeezed and squeezed and having to do more for less. I want to do my bit. I'm desperate to contribute to this. I didn't enter the NHS for the money or the glory. But for FUCKS sake - I don't have spare, validated kits, analysers or trained staff in my pocket, and neither do those poor bastards, working flat out in the big labs. Put yourself in our shoes before you take a massive shit on us!"
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