Diagnostic Clinical Microbiology laboratories performing COVID-19 testing have been hit particularly hard during the COVID-19 pandemic and this will likely continue for many months to come. In addition to testing for COVID-19, patients requiring hospitalization, including those admitted to the intensive care unit often require extensive microbiology investigations including blood culture sets, sputum/urine for culture and susceptibility testing and others. How prepared are clinical microbiology laboratories for COVID-19 testing along with “routine” clinical microbiology services? The pressure for preparedness is related to staffing and hours of operation, technology and supply chain. On our service, COVID-19 specimen volumes have been as high as 500/ day with our routine microbiology specimen volumes between 1000-1400 specimens/day. As such, COVID-19 represents a 26-33% increase in specimen numbers.
