Open AccessThe First Quarter of SARS-CoV-2 Testing: the University of Washington Medicine Experience
Author(s) -
Alexander L. Greninger,
Keith R. Jerome
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of clinical microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.349
H-Index - 255
eISSN - 1070-633X
pISSN - 0095-1137
DOI - 10.1128/jcm.01416-20
Subject(s) - covid-19 , medicine , diagnostic test , coronavirus , quarter (canadian coin) , sars virus , virology , test (biology) , clinical microbiology , betacoronavirus , family medicine , pediatrics , history , pathology , biology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , disease , outbreak , paleontology , archaeology , microbiology and biotechnology
In early March 2020, the University of Washington Medical Center clinical virology laboratory became one of the first clinical laboratories to offer testing for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). When we first began test development in mid-January, neither of us believed there would be more than 2 million confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections nationwide or that we would have performed more than 150,000 real-time PCR (RT-PCR) tests, with many more to come. This article will be a chronological summary of how we rapidly validated tests for SARS-CoV-2, increased our testing capacity, and addressed the many problems that came up along the way.