UCSF Lab accelerates all test processing in the bay area for free

UCSF opens lab in San Francisco to handle thousands of free coronavirus diagnostic tests from public health departments in all nine Bay Area counties—a significant boost in Bay Area testing capabilities and state aggressiveness Test more residents working and get test results faster.

UCSF set up a laboratory in Mission Bay eight days in March after signing Governor Gavin News, who signed an administrative order to relax clinical laboratory restrictions on March 12. Dedicated to processing COVID-19 tests, it can run up to 2,600 samples per day and report results in 24 hours.

UCSF’s major clinical laboratories have been conducting coronavirus tests since March 9, but also process many other types of tests. The new lab started processing tests on March 20, but recently enough staff and lab equipment were added to handle the large number of tests.

With the efficient use of labs, California can get the much needed boost in test capacity.

In addition to the lack of test components such as swabs and chemical reagents, the biggest problem with testing in California is its small size. Hayward test siteFor example, about 100 tests are run a day. Or, the test is sent to a commercial lab, such as Quest, and it takes up to 12 days to report the results. Such delays make it difficult for physicians to make a quick diagnosis and treatment plan, making it impossible for public health officials to understand the spread of the virus in real time.

Statewide labs process an average of about 9,500 tests per day, according to a chronicl analysis of daily test figures published by the state after March 19, when the first figures were published. Newsom said Tuesday he hoped the state would test 25,000 people a day in the next few weeks.

UCSF Labs will cost approximately $ 4 million to set up and run over the next few months and is funded by a charity backed by the Chan Zuckerberg initiative, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and wife Dr. Priscilla Chan . Two surgeons, Charles Chiu and Steve Miller, UCSF’s specialists in medicine, supervise the surgery. The lab staff is staffed by Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, a research organization that connects scientists from UCSF, Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley, and provides grants to support their research. Many are graduate students, shelving their papers to focus on the COVID-19 test.

UCSV’s announcement is because other major Bay Area labs running the COVID-19 test are also expanding their test capacity. Stanford started testing on March 4 and can process about 2,000 samples per day (from 1,000 a few weeks ago). Kaiser Permanente Northern California is working to run 1,000 tests per day and up to 8,000 to 10,000 tests per day. Mid May.

UCSF Labs is not a test site, so you should not go there to take the tests. However, you can accept lab samples from the Bay Area County public health department. This sample collects lab samples from small physician clinics, nursing homes, and other healthcare facilities. Therefore, local health officials who previously had to wait a few days to get results can now get results from UCSF in less than 24 hours, saying that Chan Zuckerberg Biohub co-president and UCSF biochemistry professor One Dr. Joe DeRisi said:

And it’s free-billing insurance companies, billing for processing, or the distinction from many laboratories paid by other sources. The Hayward Test Site is operated with $ 500,000 from the city and the city may be redeemed by federal or state disaster funds.

“I don’t think there should be a cost barrier to taking the test,” DeRisi said. “This expansion lab is dedicated to providing free Bay Area Community Services.”

According to Vox analysis of state test data, California ranks 43rd out of 50 states and the District of Columbia in per capita tests. The state is far Big backlog The number of tests pending from other states that also report the number of pending tests. Recently, as in last week, 64% of tests performed in California were still pending.

Newsam said the backlog had shrunk significantly over the weekend, dropping to 9% of all tests performed by Monday. However, California still has 14,600 pending tests, far more than any other state that shares data on pending tests. According to the Covid Tracking Project, Florida was followed by about 1,400 tests, which accounted for about 1% of all tests.

Katherine Ho is a staff writer at the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] twitter: @Cat_Ho