Laboratory staff have been working around the clock to get thousands of Covid-19 swab results back to anxious patients.
Medlab South Laboratory staff (part of the Southern Community Lab Group) across Nelson and Marlborough have been working 24 hours a day, seven days a week during lockdown.
Under Alert Level 4, swab numbers rose from 100 per day to more than 1000 on top of usual community and hospital testing.
Regional laboratory manager for Nelson and Marlborough, Rebecca Brosnan, says staff have been “flexible and adaptable” when it comes to tackling the increased workload.
“Under Level 4, we moved to 24/7 capacity in molecular pathology which we don’t normally do.
“Everyone has been really adaptable and flexible. They know they are not in an industry where they just go into lockdown, it has to be business as usual.”
Meanwhile 141,391 vaccine shots have been administered in the region.
As of 31 August, this represented 123 per cent of the roll out plan for the Top of the South. Prior to the pandemic, the Blenheim-based laboratory at Wairau Hospital and the one within Nelson Hospital had the capacity to analyse about 480 swabs a day.
But with thousands of swabs flooding in from Community Based Assessment Centres (CBAC) and local GP surgeries, it was clear that needed to change, Rebecca says.
The main analyser at Nelson Hospital can now take up to 1500 swabs a day, taking swabs from across both regions.
“This lockdown, because there were cold and flu symptoms in the community, we needed a much larger surge capacity,” Rebecca says.
“To save time we were sending overflow to our sister lab in Canterbury but then adapted to cope so the analyser could take on more.”
Results are usually back within 72 hours of collection during peak surge times.
Rebecca says while ideally people would like results back sooner, the logistics involved make that impossible.
Under the laboratory’s emergency response planning, microbiologists and molecular staff in both Nelson and Marlborough are split into two bubbles at each site.
This ensures there is always back up available should one team have to go into isolation.
“Staff have gone out of their way to make sure everything works, and that needs to be acknowledged.”
By Paula Hulbert
