The Clinical Laboratories at the Wexner Medical Centers have processed over 505,000 COVID-19 tests since opening in Mar. 2020. Credit: Courtesy of the Wexner Medical Center
If you’re an Ohio State student, chances are you’re familiar with the university’s COVID-19 surveillance testing program, which has processed more than 530,000 tests. But that isn’t Ohio State’s only massive testing operation.
Ohio State’s Clinical Laboratories at the Wexner Medical Center have processed more than 505,000 COVID-19 tests from nasal, oral and pharyngeal — long swabs that go far up the nostrils — swab samples since last March, Dr. JoAnna Williams, medical director of the Clinical Laboratories, said.
Before the pandemic, the Clinical Laboratories processed tests ordered by the medical center and community doctors for genetic testing, blood tests, molecular testing and more, Williams said. But last March, it added COVID-19 tests to their rotation.
The lab processes PCR tests, which Williams said are similar to a bowl of 1,000 marbles with one red and the rest blue. The red marble is the virus’ DNA that laboratory workers try to extract from the rest of the DNA sample.
Setting up the lab in a short amount of time presented challenges, Williams said.
“COVID kind of popped up all of a sudden, and COVID PCR testing is complex testing,” Williams said. “We have a relatively small portion of our staff who are familiar with PCR testing for their daily duties, so given the short timeframe, we had to pull staff from those limited areas to come over to the COVID lab.”
Williams said the lab receives tests from university swab stations, group living facilities such as nursing homes and prisons, small hospitals with small laboratories and laboratories unable to perform PCR tests.
The laboratory has satellite locations at which patients who live far from the medical center can take a test before they visit, Keelie Thomas, the assistant manager at the COVID-19 testing laboratory, said. They can then travel to the hospital while their sample is delivered to the lab for testing.
The laboratory faced issues with the supply chain, like many other medical facilities in the beginning of the pandemic, Thomas said.
“The simplest little thing like tips for pipettes, which is just little plastic pieces, we were having trouble getting,” Thomas said.
Thomas said to account for supply shortages in the beginning, the laboratory used seven different types of COVID-19 tests.
The laboratory no longer uses all seven types, Thomas said, but some are still used for specific purposes. One test, for example, yields results in about 90 minutes, so it is primarily used for emergency department patients so they aren’t admitted to immunocompromised areas if they have COVID-19.
The COVID-19 laboratory now has permanent staff, is open 24/7 and has three working shifts, Williams said.
“It’s taken many months because it is complex testing, and so the training for these technologists isn’t short,” Williams said. “It’s a couple of months.”
About 30 people test samples at the site and 13 manage orders, Thomas said.
Williams said most outpatient tests have results within the day or by the next morning, which she said was significant due to the number of samples tested.
“There aren’t robotic instruments, like we have in the main lab, where they come in and they go on an automation line,” Williams said. “These are all handled individually, prior to the input on an instrument, and each one of them has data that is, at least in a cursory manner, reviewed by a human before it’s released.”
