More workers needed to deal with high COVID-19 test volumes at provincial lab

COVID-19 case numbers have taken a leap in Saskatchewan the last couple of weeks, and with that comes a big jump in testing, but that seems to be putting a strain on the Roy Romanow Provincial Lab.

Premier Scott Moe has said previously that the testing capacity at the lab is about 1,500 per day and for the last 10 days or so the testing numbers have in and around there, hitting a high of 1,799 tests done last Saturday.

“During a spike like this, the limiting factor is people. Our technologists are highly trained and very talented and they don’t grow on trees. So the human factor in the lab or getting technologists that are able to run these molecular assays is the limiting factor,” said Dr. Jessica Minion, the provincial clinical lead of public health for laboratory medicine within the Saskatchewan Health Authority.

She said it’s very busy in the lab right now and technologists are running around “off their feet” quite a bit and doing extra hours. However, Minion said the current pace isn’t really sustainable.

“If we had to do this for multiple weeks on end I think that our technologists would be completely burned out and might not come back to us for the fall season, so we don’t necessarily want to sustain that without getting some additional help. But we’re working on getting them some additional help.”

In the “lull” of cases before the current spike, Minion said the lab was preparing. They ordered more equipment that allows them to process a higher volume of tests, hired more staff and trained more as well.

The lab is still working on bringing in more equipment and more people, but hiring can be difficult as Minion says the technologists need to be highly trained. The lab has a goal to ramp up testing enough to be able to do 4,000 tests a day in the fall and winter.

Minion praised the staff at the lab multiple times, saying they’ve all pulled together really well with the urgency of the pandemic. She said they want to make sure they’re taking care of their workers’ mental health and well-being as well, so the lab is doing its best to accommodate breaks and vacation time.

When it comes to equipment, Minion said they’re in a good position right now. Manufacturing of equipment has been good and she said the lab isn’t in danger of running out of anything in particular right now.

A pillar in the battle

The provincial lab is a large glass building near the University of Regina. It’s the place where patients’ swabs from all over the province are rushed to find out if they’re part of the global pandemic.

While most of the province was still concentrating on keeping warm in the first couple months of this year, the lab was already preparing for COVID-19.

Minion said they were watching when the first reports started to come out of China. They were preparing when the virus was sequenced and labs in Canada started working on a way to test for it. And by February they were already working on bringing everything they’d need into the lab.

“So, most people when the schools closed and things started happening in the middle to late March, our hardest work was finished by then,” said Minion.

Swift and accurate testing has been named multiple times by provincial leadership as one of the three pillars to control the pandemic. Minion said it’s gratifying. She said, in general, the lab and the role it plays in healthcare is often overlooked.

“Just being appreciated in general as one of the three important pillars of pandemic control has been really quite gratifying, that people have been interested in what we do and appreciative of the work that we do every day,” said Minion.

In a recent study in the Journal of Clinical Virology found the Roy Romanow Provincial Lab was the second most effective at detecting COVID-19 out of 17 labs from 9 provinces included in the study. Minion put all that success on the people working at the lab, saying they’re top quality, “the best of the best” and they don’t get appreciated enough.

Minion called this situation a challenge, but one they welcome – that it’s what the labs and the technologists are here for.

“We have been prepared to deal with a situation like this, and now it’s game time.”

Minion said at first things were a little surreal, but now they’ve settled in and are all working to get things done. She did say, with COVID-19, it’s a bit of a one-note track at work these days.

“Once in a while someone will ask me a question about syphilis or something, and it’s like ‘syphilis? Oh, yeah, right, we have other infectious diseases still,'” she joked.

Minion made a point of thanking the people in Saskatchewan for being willing to stay home and keep the virus numbers low in the beginning, saying it makes their lives better and makes their jobs easier. She said if that hadn’t been the case, then the lab would be in a completely different situation right now.

Minion said she hopes people in Saskatchewan will continue their precautions – physically distancing, washing hands and mask-wearing – to keep helping them out through the next wave and the next season.

Editor’s note: the story has been updated to correct the location of the Roy Romanow Provincial Lab