For three months, Tan Tock Seng Hospital has been running tests 24/7 in the face of several challenges, from trying to ramp up capacity to warding ...
SINGAPORE: For years, since the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in Singapore ended, Tan Tock Seng Hospital’s department of laboratory medicine had been planning for another outbreak like it.
“When you’re dealing with hundreds of samples in the middle of the night, every night, it’s very, very difficult,” said Partha De.Singapore’s COVID-19 testing capacity has risen from a daily average of 2,900 tests early last month to more than 8,000. There are now a number of places — from hospitals to public and private labs — where samples are being tested.
“You get the wrong sample from the wrong patient at this stage, it's a complete disaster,” added the doctor. The material must be extracted into a liquid, which is pipetted into a tube where chemicals known as reagents are used to isolate the COVID-19 viral genome, if it is present. Often, however, there are more samples coming in than the amount that can be tested immediately — a situation that medical technologist Tan Yong Wen described as “mentally taxing’.
At the start of the outbreak, TTSH had 13 lab technologists who were trained in the general PCR technique. But they needed training to do a specific PCR test for Sars-CoV-2 after China provided its exact genome sequence.This diagnostic test, called the Fortitude Kit 2.0 and co-developed by the hospital and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, was approved on Feb 7.
“They detect the infection, but after 10 to 14 days of symptoms. That’s too slow,” he said. “The gold standard is still the PCR.”
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