COVID PCR Testing Capacity Reaching Crisis Time

The stresses and strains of the long two-year battle with COVID are coming to a head for the beleaguered laboratory workforce of Aotearoa New Zealand. The PCR testing demand is outstripping our ability to function in a clear and coordinated way due to the sheer numbers of samples coming through the laboratory doors. As the positivity rates have increased the ability to perform mass pooling of samples has decreased resulting in a drop in PCR testing capacity. The staff in the laboratories are working relentlessly to keep up but there is just physically not enough staff, equipment, or logistics to perform the number of tests arriving in a timely manner. Our thoughts are also with our public health colleagues who are dealing with this unprecedented demand, particularly at the sampling stations. The demand on the public health units has also pushed them firmly against the wall. The Northern region laboratories and in particular Auckland are quickly turning into ground zero, the rest of the country will follow suit in the coming days if strategies don’t change.

The New Zealand Institute of Medical Laboratory Science (NZIMLS) is making a plea to those in governance of the pandemic health response to strongly communicate the message that non-symptomatic testing is totally clogging the ability of laboratories to function.

PCR testing should be reserved for assisting with diagnosis of clinically significant COVID infections and other vulnerable or high-risk groups where a clinical outcome is determined by the result.

‘There is simply no need with the virus deeply embedded in the community for any mass laboratory surveillance testing approach. We know the virus is everywhere, testing doesn’t change or add to that outcome’, says Terry Taylor the president of the NZIMLS.

‘We need to change our focus to prioritising the sickest patients and the settings where the most vulnerable people are. To run our diagnostic laboratories into the ground with endless irrelevant testing is a direct reflection of poor foresight, planning and respect for the role of this critical health workforce’, says Taylor.

The NZIMLS totally supports the views of Dr Bryan Betty the RNZGP medical director when he says:

‘We need to be de-escalating this down to get into a position where most of us are just going to have a mild to moderate illness, that we're going to get through like any respiratory illness in winter, and we need to be moving on, and perhaps the way we're approaching it at the moment is causing more problems than good, and we may have reached a pivot point with that’

‘Our laboratories have reached this pivot point now’, says Taylor.

This is a very difficult and, in many cases, heart-breaking situation for our dedicated and hard-working frontline medical laboratory scientists and technicians. They have fought a battle of monumental proportions for nearly two years. It is time for the reinforcements and a new strategy to come in now.

‘I feel strong emotions now, there is an underlying part of me that feels like we are almost defeated in this long battle. But when I reflect on the personal and working sacrifices that this workforce continues to show I feel privileged to call myself a medical laboratory scientist in Aotearoa New Zealand’, says Taylor.

‘I will challenge anyone who thinks that laboratory tests are more important than people and that waiting days for results is a reflection on an underperforming workforce, this couldn’t be further from the actual truth’, says Taylor

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