Severe backlog at labs, expect extended turnaround times for Covid-19 results

Private laboratories such as Ampath and Lancet have reported a severe backlog in Covid-19 tests, affecting how long it takes for people to get their virus results.

“The rapid spread of the virus in the province and throughout South Africa threatens to overwhelm both public and private medical facilities and services, including private pathology laboratory services,” said Ampath CEO Dr Mick Forder in a statement.

Forder said although Ampath continued to ramp up Covid-19 testing capacity, the volume of Covid-19 samples received over the last week impacted negatively the turnaround-time.

Forder said under current circumstances, it would prioritise testing to only high-risk patients.

“Due to the volume of samples received daily, ill hospitalised patients, healthcare workers, symptomatic patients and high-risk vulnerable patients with comorbidities will be our first priority for Covid-19 testing,” he said.

Furthermore, the lab requested doctors to only refer symptomatic patients for Covid-19 testing as a temporary measure until it can process all the referrals.

This means that an individual with no symptoms, who was in close contact with a confirmed positive Covid-19 case, would not be tested under current circumstances.

Contact persons showing no symptoms were advised to self-quarantine for 14 days and only test when they show symptoms.

According to Ampath, the backlog pushed results to between 48 and 96 hours.

“This will depend on the distance from the collection site to performing laboratory and the volume of tests at the laboratory. Other patient result turnaround-time could be over 96 hours.”

Initially, the results at the labs took about 24 hours for people to receive them.

“We apologise in advance for the delayed Covid-19 test turnaround times and we assure you we will continue in our efforts to ramp up capacity in order to reduce this going forward.”

In a statement, Lancet laboratories said it would prioritise the testing of health workers, hospital inpatients, pre-admission testing, symptomatic patients and high-risk patients with comorbidities.

Dealing with the backlog, Lancet said it would not prioritise patients seeking to retest after 14 days of initial tests, low-risk contacts requesting testing eight days after of exposure and low-risk contacts.

Department of Health spokesperson Dr Lwazi Manzi said the department was to shift from its mass testing strategy under rapid growing Covid-19 cases and target hotspot areas.

This after the Covid-19 ministerial advisory committee flagged that mass testing strategy close to peak season could lead to resource constraints and a large testing backlog.

Last week, the Gauteng Health MEC Bandile Masuku reported a 30 000 backlog in the department’s laboratories.

Masuku said the department was working with private laboratories to alleviate the backlog , as the province continues to record a high number of coronavirus cases.

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