That effort, said Gonias and David Pride, MD, PhD, an infectious disease specialist and the lead molecular microbiologist at CALM, is moving apace. On March 20, UC San Diego Health announced new partnerships with four additional leading in vitro diagnostics manufacturers to dramatically ramp up testing capacity to 1,000 to 1,500 tests per day by mid-April. Within 10 days, CALM was performing approximately 20 Covid-19 nucleic acid detection tests per day.
In early March, the Molecular Microbiology Laboratory in the Center for Advanced Laboratory Medicine (CALM) at UC San Diego Health partnered with Carlsbad-based GenMark Diagnostics, to develop its first clinical assay. But it was a time-consuming process, with results taking several days as need and demand grew.
Previously, health systems had primarily relied upon the Centers for Disease Control for COVID-19 testing. Food and Drug Administration loosened rules to allow High Complexity CLIA-certified, university-based hospital laboratories to develop their own in-house tests for COVID-19. The path to this moment has not been long - COVID-19 was only officially named in early February - but it has been tortuous. “More test results will start to create a clearer picture of what we want to do next, what we want to happen next.” An emerging crisis
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“I think we’re getting to the point, with our increasing testing capacity, that we can start figuring out how to use testing as a weapon to reverse the pandemic,” said Steve Gonias, MD, PhD, chief of pathology services for UC San Diego Health and chair of the Department of Pathology at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “We need to ask, ‘What is our moral position? How do we think about this crisis in a way that makes sense not just for us and our patients, but across the region?’” “One of the obligations we have as an academic medical center and a place with deep experience and expertise in times like these is how do we think about testing,” said Patty Maysent, CEO of San Diego Health. Together, we are inventing new technologies, developing effective therapies and treatments, and making fundamental scientific discoveries.”Īt UC San Diego Health, teams of doctors, scientists and administrators have worked hard to fill gaps and needs in COVID-19 testing, making measurable, remarkable progress, moving from crisis mode in early days to a broader, more thoughtful approach that addresses not just the continuing and urgent needs of patients, staff and students, but the wellness and future of the larger community. “Long distinguished by non-traditional thinking, UC San Diego is rising to the challenge of this current public health crisis to meet the needs of our local and global communities through cross-discipline collaborations and creative partnerships with industry.
“Pandemics require an extra dose of determination, fortitude and innovation,” said UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Testing shortages have hindered health care systems around the world, spurring extraordinary efforts to find and implement testing strategies. From the beginning, the ability of front line clinicians to test patients for COVID-19 - to determine whether a person is infected with the disease-causing novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 - has been part and parcel of the pandemic.
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