I worked in a COVID-19 laboratory, AMA

[covidlablife]

I used to work in a COVID-19 lab. I feel like COVID labs have a bit of a bad reputation with the BBC Panorama interview and now the news today about the Wolverhampton lab and the false negatives. In contrast, I have nothing but positive things to say about the lab I worked in.

If anyone has any questions about the labs or testing processes I would love to answer. :)

To be honest, I have no idea! Just by going by my experience in the lab I worked in, there were so many strict protocols and procedures in place I don't know how or where in the lab process these false negatives could have occurred, especially with that many samples.

Interesting as a guy in the radio talking about labs said same thing

Which variants are being monitored now? Is AY.23 on the list?

Did your lab participate in external quality controls e.g NEQAS? Intra-lab comparability studies?

During your time there were you assessed by UKAS and if so was the test you were performing accredited (meeting ISO15189 standards)

Do you have to be an HPC registered scientist to perform the tests/validate results?

I’m so interested in this. We’ve had an outbreak at our school and we’re all asked to do PCR tests. I’m suspicious that some of the parents are not swabbing properly as very close contacts of the affected children came back as negative (I’m talking sitting together, heads together, hand-holding etc etc). The same parents have said they found it almost impossible to do the test and barely put it inside the nose…

Does that mean it’ll come back negative rather than inconclusive? If so, what a trick to avoid time off school! 😠

OP, what would you say to people who keep getting very faint positives on lateral flow followed by negative PCR (and feel well).

To be fair @Motherdare , it’s a weird virus. Neither of my kids caught it from me despite zero isolating from them. We hugged, kissed, danced, sang, played. I cooked their meals and we ended up in the same bed several nights.

They had no symptoms what so ever. I PCR’d them on day 3 & day 9 and I LF them daily before sending them to school/nursery. I’m 99.9% certain they didn’t have it.

Also, when I had covid, I barely had to put the swab up my nose to get a positive LFT. A brief wipe round & it was a glaring positive.

I don’t think you can be quite so sure close contacts are definitely going to catch it & all the parents are just being sneaky to get their kids back to school!

Also, the PCR swabs are massive! You can barely get it up young kids noses! I did my 18 month old on Friday and I could barely get it in her nostril!

I wish they’d make them smaller for kids, they do have smaller noses!

Is the PCR test the same one in every lab or do the primers vary?

Do they work 24/7 or long days? I lve been impresssed at the speed of some results.

Are private tests for travel processed at the same site? If so, are they prioritised?