Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences, Animal Health Diagnostic Center (AHDC), College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell COVID-19 Testing Laboratory (CCTL), Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
Information Technology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
Viruses. 2023 Jul 15;15(7):1555. doi: 10.3390/v15071555.
The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic posed major challenges to local, regional, and global economies and health systems, and fast clinical diagnostic workflows were urgently needed to contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Here, we describe the platform and workflow established at the Cornell COVID-19 Testing Laboratory (CCTL) for the high-throughput testing of clinical samples from the university and the surrounding community. This workflow enabled efficient and rapid detection and the successful control of SARS-CoV-2 infection on campus and its surrounding communities. Our cost-effective and fully automated workflow enabled the testing of over 8000 pooled samples per day and provided results for over 2 million samples. The automation of time- and effort-intensive sample processing steps such as accessioning and pooling increased laboratory efficiency. Customized software applications were developed to track and store samples, deconvolute positive pools, track and report results, and for workflow integration from sample receipt to result reporting. Additionally, quality control dashboards and turnaround-time tracking applications were built to monitor assay and laboratory performance. As infectious disease outbreaks pose a constant threat to both human and animal health, the highly effective workflow implemented at CCTL could be modeled to establish regional high-capacity testing hubs for infectious disease preparedness and emergency response.
史无前例的 COVID-19 大流行给地方、区域和全球经济以及卫生系统带来了重大挑战，迫切需要快速的临床诊断工作流程来控制 SARS-CoV-2 的传播。在这里，我们描述了康奈尔 COVID-19 检测实验室 (CCTL) 为大学及其周边社区的临床样本建立的高通量检测平台和工作流程。该工作流程能够高效快速地检测和成功控制 SARS-CoV-2 在校园及其周边社区的感染。我们的高性价比且完全自动化的工作流程每天能够测试超过 8000 个混合样本，并提供超过 200 万个样本的检测结果。将耗时费力的样本处理步骤（如挂号和混合）自动化，提高了实验室的效率。定制的软件应用程序用于跟踪和存储样本、对阳性样本进行解卷积、跟踪和报告结果，并实现从样本接收至结果报告的工作流程整合。此外，还构建了质量控制仪表板和周转时间跟踪应用程序，以监测检测和实验室性能。由于传染病的爆发不断威胁着人类和动物的健康，因此可以对 CCTL 实施的这种高效工作流程进行建模，以建立用于传染病防范和应急响应的区域大容量检测中心。
