Covid-19 testing labs will soon be ‘overrun’ as Omicron spreads, workers warn
Monday, 24 January 2022
Laboratory workers are warning they will be unable to cope if labs are swamped with Omicron tests as infection rates in New Zealand soar.
The Ministry of Health claims labs can handle 62,000 tests a day during a Covid-19 surge, but that’s disputed by Terry Taylor, president of New Zealand Institute of Medical Laboratory Science, the professional body representing 4000 medical laboratory scientists and technicians.
“We’d survive for three days doing that, and we’d be gone in a week.
“That would overrun the laboratories, and we’d be unable to do anything else diagnostic testing-wise, we’d really struggle to maintain even 50 per cent of those services.”
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The Apex union covering lab workers estimates New Zealand diagnostic laboratories are at least 400 workers short, and general secretary Deborah Powell agreed there was a high risk of the system being swamped as demand for Omicron tests ramped up.
The Ministry said labs were able to process 42,000 tests on a daily basis, with a surge capacity of 62,000, and plans were in place to ensure they continued to operate during community spread, but it declined to elaborate on what those plans involved.
Taylor said that processing even 40,000 tests a day was a stretch because a rise in positive cases prevented labs from “pooling”, the practice of processing batches of five to eight samples at once, and only doing individual tests if a batch returned a positive result.
“If you get a 30 per cent positivity rate, you can’t do that, so that instantly drops your ability to test really quickly.”
In announcing the move to the red traffic light setting on Sunday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the country was currently in the first stage of three stages, where it would stay while there were fewer than 1000 cases a day.
The Government will release more details about handling of the pandemic through the next two stages on Wednesday, and Taylor said he was waiting with bated breath for that announcement.
Because lab staff do not deal face to face with patients, Taylor said those who tested positive but were asymptomatic, may be asked to work on regardless, as had occurred in hard-pressed labs overseas.
“We know not everyone gets sick with Omicron, but they can still spread it, and that’s the problem. It’s going to be tricky.”
Taylor said he believed there would inevitably have to be rationing of non-critical diagnostic tests to relieve pressure on a lab workforce depleted by Omicron absences.
He said all cancer diagnoses and 70 to 80 per cent of other medical diagnoses relied on lab tests.
If things got “really grim” with laboratories over-run just doing Covid-19 tests, non-urgent samples could be stored until they could be processed.
“We’d put all the emphasis on getting emergency patients and Covid patients sorted.”
Asia Pacific Healthcare Group (APHG) is New Zealand’s largest provider of Covid-19 testing, and in total does close to 50 million diagnostic tests annually at its 25 laboratories.
Chief executive Anoop Singh said he would not suggest rationing of tests. “If those decisions are made by others, that's fine, but we don’t feel we need to compromise what we do.”
Singh said APHG learned a lot from the Delta outbreak when labs in regional centres like Christchurch and Dunedin helped pick-up the load when volumes in Auckland spiked.
The MOH had offered the use of Defence Force aircraft and medevac flights to transport samples between labs if Air New Zealand flights were unavailable, “but we haven’t had to call upon those just yet”.
Over the past year, the company had invested $15m in machines and robotic equipment to process and analyse samples, tripling capacity across the lab network.
Singh said the Covid workforce of about 200 could be bolstered by several hundred more by redeploying cross-trained staff from other departments, and by extending operating hours. “The bottlenecks will be on the collection side, not the laboratories.”
CPHG staff would be supplied with rapid antigen tests (RAT) so they could test themselves at home if they have symptoms, and APHG employees in Auckland had trialled saliva tests for several months.
In Australia, where the high number of positive results had caused issues, Singh said allowing asymptomatic essential workers to continue working was sensible, but the company would be guided by New Zealand Government policy.