■Our reporter Zhang Yi
Nucleic acid testing is an important weapon to help Shanghai win the tough battle of epidemic prevention and control.
Over the past month or so, through various efforts, the city's daily nucleic acid detection capacity has increased significantly, from the original 1 million tubes to the current 5.8 million tubes.
If it is calculated based on the mixed mining of five people and one tube, it can support up to 29 million people's testing needs per day.
According to reports, according to the requirements for resumption of work and production in the future, Shanghai also plans to further improve its detection capabilities to better ensure the safe and orderly operation of the city.
Most of the new capacity comes from local
According to the person in charge of the relevant work of the Municipal Economic and Information Commission, there are currently more than 60 nucleic acid testing institutions and nearly 10,000 testing personnel in the city, supporting the high-intensity and high-precision nucleic acid testing tasks required for prevention and control in a 24-hour manner.
Of the testing capacity that has increased sharply in the past month or so, 3/4 comes from the facility expansion and internal potential tapping of the city's testing institutions, and about 1/4 comes from the construction assistance from other provinces and cities.
At present, among the nucleic acid testing institutions in Shanghai, Dean Diagnostics is a very representative one.
For more than a month, its nucleic acid detection capacity in Shanghai has increased by about 10 times.
Shi Yupeng, vice president of Dean Diagnostics and general manager of Shanghai Center, told reporters that the company had previously owned a central laboratory in Yangpu District that had been established for more than 10 years.
At the beginning of March this year, the laboratory's daily nucleic acid detection capacity was about 40,000 tubes.
After the outbreak of the current round of the epidemic, with the support of all parties, 3 square cabin laboratories and 4 air membrane laboratories were built in Baoshan, Huangpu, Pudong, Minhang and other districts successively, forming a "1+3+4" system. pattern.
At present, the laboratory of Dean Diagnostics in Shanghai adopts a 24-hour linkage mode, and the total daily testing capacity exceeds 400,000 tubes.
These capabilities will first serve the nearby sampling points, and if there is surplus, they will be released under the overall coordination of the city.
Every little bit of savings is combined into a significant efficiency improvement
For a testing organization, the "capacity explosion" in the past month or so is not only based on the "expanded" development of increasing venues, equipment, and manpower, but an important part is the implementation of a 24-hour work mode, continuous reconstruction or optimization. process is realized.
Located in the Shanghai International Medical Park in Pudong, the Dishuo Beiken Laboratory has been waiting for the last few days, and the lights are always on all night.
In fact, from 6:00 every morning, the small partners of the sample receiving group of Dishuo Beken will be in place one after another, receive specimens, enter information, and distribute them to various testing sites.
In the follow-up laboratory work, the staff completes the steps of reagent configuration, sample addition, nucleic acid extraction, amplification and other links step by step according to the process... The entire rotation cycle usually lasts until the early morning of the next day.
Then, until the sky is getting brighter, the team responsible for the generation of test reports and information transmission still needs to continue to complete the final finishing work.
It can be said that in order to fight the overall situation of the epidemic, the nucleic acid testing institutions and employees in the city have assumed huge responsibilities and challenges.
After more than a month of intensive training, the sampling and testing process has been continuously optimized, and the efficiency has continued to improve, which has also contributed to the jump in Shanghai's nucleic acid testing capabilities.
Shi Yupeng from Dean Diagnostics said that they have been discovering problems and improving methods from the first step of information entry, to laboratory extraction and amplification, and then to subsequent information reporting.
For example, changing the sample barcode from the original ring sticker to the vertical sticker can extract a few seconds from each barcode scan. In the large sample detection process, these little savings will be combined into a significant efficiency improvement.
At present, this set of testing procedures optimized for multiple iterations has been replicated in the company's laboratories across the city.
From sample collection to report issuance, it can usually be completed within three to four hours.
Strive for a higher level of detection capabilities
The improvement of the ability of individual enterprises is highly related to their responsibility and efforts; from the perspective of the whole city, it is also due to the coordination mechanism and service guarantee provided by government departments in special times.
At present, the Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology has arranged special personnel for testing institutions to respond quickly to the needs of enterprises 24 hours a day. At the same time, through the dispatching system of government departments, it helps each enterprise to better achieve inventory security and ensure stable production capacity to the greatest extent. output.
It is worth mentioning that in this round of new construction and expansion of nucleic acid testing sites, relevant departments in Shanghai and districts have also explored a "green channel" service mechanism.
Taking Dean Diagnostics as an example, it is located at a point in Pudong. From the confirmation of the site in the afternoon of the first day, the construction and installation of equipment will be carried out overnight. The relevant departments will come to the site for inspection and acceptance on the second day, and the laboratory will begin to provide external services on the third day. Serve.
Typically, it takes at least one to two weeks to complete such an acceptance.
At present, the laboratory's daily testing capacity has reached 150,000 tubes.
According to the Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology, Shanghai's nucleic acid testing capabilities are currently in a "tight balance" state, that is to say, supply and demand are basically in line with each other in the short term, but in the future it is still necessary to further tap the potential and strive to bring the testing capabilities to a higher level.
Shi Yupeng also said that in the future, as more and more companies resume work and production, the city's demand for nucleic acid testing will further increase. They are planning to increase the daily testing capacity by 10% to 20% in the near future.