Page 43 - SARS-COV-2-laboratory-viral-outbreak-perspective-investigation-by-ICR-NIH-MY

Introduction

I jumped into this group much later. I think I joined late in February or sometime in early
March. Basically, just to fill up the gap between the health side and IMR side because there
are many testing centres which are also from the hospital laboratories. They have been roped
in to upscale the testing. They needed someone to become the ears and the eyes (i.e. liaison
person) for the hospital laboratories. This was when I started to join the group.

Basically everything has been done by Dr.Hani and Dr.Ravi. They have conducted training,
but there were some issues with regards to interpretation of tests and troubleshooting of
technicalities. Therefore, my role at that time was to organise CME sessions for them,
together with Dr.Hani and Dr.Ravi. We discussed issues related to interpretation and the
shortfalls in terms of the quality of testing.
We had a few CME sessions and we also have our own WhatsApp group for discussion. The
12 testing centres have done PCR testing activities for influenza as well as MERS-CoV, so
we are not new to this testing. All of these testing centres have clinical microbiologists and
good scientific officers. There were not many issues, but we just have to make sure the
running is smooth, and there is no gap in between. This is because they are not there at the
receiving end.