CAP president maintains medical laboratory staff are ‘indispensable’ in pandemic fight and should be in ‘top tier’ for vaccination
As COVID-19 vaccinations continue to roll out, the College of American Pathologists (CAP) is lobbying for clinical pathologists and medical laboratory staff to be moved up the priority list for vaccinations, stating they are “indispensable” in the pandemic fight.
In a news release, CAP’s President Patrick Godbey, MD, FCAP argued for the early vaccination of laboratory workers, “It is essential that early access to the vaccine be provided to all pathologists and laboratory personnel,” he said. “Pathologists have led throughout this pandemic by bringing tests for the coronavirus online in communities across the country and we must ensure that patient access to testing continues. We must also serve as a resource to discuss the facts about the vaccine and answer questions patients, family members, and friends have about why they should get the vaccine when it is available to them.”
In a phone call following a virtual press conference, pathologists and CAP President Patrick Godbey, MD (above), told MedPage Today that even if medical laboratory staff are not directly in contact with patients, they should be considered “top tier” (designated as Phase 1a) for getting the vaccine. “I think they [clinical laboratory workers] should be considered in the same tier as nurses,” said Godbey, who also is Laboratory Director at Southeastern Pathology Associates and Southeast Georgia Health System in Brunswick, Ga. “They’re indispensable. Without them, there’d be no one to run the tests.” (Photo copyright: Southeast Georgia Health System.)
Who Does CDC Think Should Be First to Be Vaccinated?
According toThe New York Times (NYT), there are an estimated 21 million healthcare workers in the United States, making it basically “impossible,” the NYT wrote, for them all to get vaccinated in the first wave of COVID-19 vaccinations.
A December 11, 2020, CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, titled, “ACIP Interim Recommendation for Allocating Initial Supplies of COVID-19 Vaccine—United States, 2020,” notes that “The [federal] Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended, as interim guidance, that both 1) healthcare personnel and 2) residents of long-term care facilities be offered COVID-19 vaccine in the initial phase of the vaccination program.”
The ACIP report defines healthcare personnel as “paid and unpaid persons serving in healthcare settings who have the potential for direct or indirect exposure to patients or infectious materials.”
However, a CDC terminology guidance document listed at the bottom of the ACIP report states, “For this update, HCP [Healthcare Personnel] does not include dental healthcare personnel, autopsy personnel, and laboratory personnel, as recommendations to address occupational infection prevention and control (IPC) services for these personnel are posted elsewhere.”
In part, the letter stated, “We are convinced that ACIP did not intend to exclude any healthcare workers from its recommendation to offer vaccinations to healthcare personnel in the initial phase of the COVID-19 vaccination program (Phase 1a). However, we would hate for jurisdictions to overlook dental, autopsy, and laboratory personnel because of a minor footnote in [CDC] guidance that was developed for an entirely different purpose (i.e., infection control).
“We respectfully ask CDC to clarify,” the letter continues, “… that all healthcare workers—including dental, autopsy, and laboratory personnel—are among those who should be given priority access to vaccine during the initial phase of the COVID-19 vaccination program.”
“In the laboratory, they are encountering and handling thousands of samples that have active live virus in them,” said Karger, who called clinical laboratory staff and phlebotomists the “forgotten” frontline healthcare workers. “We’re getting 10,000 samples a day. That’s a lot of handling of infectious specimens, and we do want [staff] to be prioritized for vaccination.”
Karger continued to stress the vital role clinical laboratories play not only in COVID-19 testing but also in the functioning of the overall health system. She added that staff burnout is a concern since laboratory staff have been working “full throttle” since March.
“From an operational standpoint, we do need to keep our lab up and running,” she said. “We don’t want to have staff out such that we would have to decrease our testing capacity, which would have widespread impacts for our health system and state.”
Testing for Post-Vaccine Immunity
The CAP panelists also highlighted the need to prepare for the aftermath of widespread COVID-19 vaccinations—the need to test for post-vaccine immunity.
“It’s not routine practice to check antibody levels after getting a vaccine but given the heightened interest in COVID testing, we are anticipating there is going to be some increased in demand for post-vaccine antibody testing,” Karger said. “We’re at least preparing for that and preparing to educate our providers.”
Karger pointed out that clinical pathologists will play an important role in educating providers about the type of antibody tests necessary to test for COVID-19 immunity, because, she says, only the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein antibody test will check for an immune response.
With the pandemic expected to stretch far into 2021, clinical laboratories will continue to play a crucial role in the nation’s healthcare response to COVID-19. As essential workers in the fight against infectious disease, clinical pathologists, clinical chemists, and all medical laboratory staff should be prioritized as frontline healthcare workers.
As demand for SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus testing increases, leaders of the College of American Pathologists meet online to brainstorm possible solutions to the crisis
In September, the College of American Pathologists (CAP) began its series of “virtual media briefings” given by leading pathologists and physicians at the forefront of COVID-19 testing which are designed to “offer insights and straight talk” on the crisis confronting today’s clinical laboratories.
During the third virtual meeting on December 9, presenters discussed how the ever-increasing demand for COVID-19 testing has placed an enormous amount of stress on clinical laboratories, medical technologists (MTs), and clinical laboratory scientists (CLSs) responsible for processing the high volume of SARS-CoV-2 tests, and on the supply chains medical laboratories depend on to receive and maintain adequate supplies of testing materials.
“As soon as we get one set of supplies, then it’s another set of supplies that we can’t get our hands on,” said Christine Wojewoda, MD, Clinical Pathologist and Associate Professor at the University of Vermont Medical Center, during the third CAP virtual briefing. “Right now, we’re very concerned that our lab can’t get pipette tips that have a certain filter in them to transfer patient samples into the tubes that we need, or the plates that we need to do the testing. If we can’t get the patient sample into where it needs to go, safely, without contaminating other patient samples, that’s a big issue.”
Other members of the CAP panel concurred with Wojewoda and indicated that their clinical labs also are encountering supply chain challenges.
“It’s a daily battle,” said Amy Karger, MD, PhD, Clinical Pathologist and Associate Professor at University of Minnesota Physicians. “One of our managers spends hours a day making sure our lab has enough supplies, plastics, and chemicals to do the testing that we want to do. And he is often having to look for alternative solutions for COVID-19 testing, making phone calls, trying to find alternative products, and so we have a consistent worry about that.”
A June survey of CAP-accredited laboratories for COVID-19 testing found that more than 60% of lab directors reported difficulties in procuring critical supplies needed to conduct COVID-19 testing. The respondents indicated they encountered substantial barriers to obtaining equipment needed for SARS-CoV-2 testing—particularly test kits (69%), swabs (66%), and transport media (62%).
Staff Burnout and Shortages at Many Medical Laboratories
Karger also indicated that she is concerned about staff burnout and the toll the workload is taking on medical technologists at her laboratory.
“Lab staff have been working full throttle since March. I think that is often lost on people. They kind of assumed that when cases were low with COVID-19, that maybe the lab staff got a break. Well, that wasn’t the case,” she stated, adding, “They [the medical technologists] were planning for this surge that we’re experiencing now and have been working often seven days a week, double shifts to get us to this point of high testing capacity [to respond to the demand for COVID-19 testing].”
Another member of the CAP panel echoed Karger’s concerns.
“We worry about that as well,” said Patrick Godbey, MD, Founder and Laboratory Director at Southeastern Pathology Associates and current CAP President. “This demand for COVID-19 testing has made an already bad situation worse because there’s an absolute shortage of medical laboratory personnel and the increased demands on clinical labs have made this shortage even more acute.”
Almost all of the surveyed CAP-accredited laboratories reported losses in revenue and financial stress since the pandemic started. But few had applied for any of the available funds offered through federal assistance programs. The survey found that the top issues among pathologists reported by laboratory directors were:
reduced work hours (72%),
reductions in pay (41%),
increased burnout (21%), and
increased work hours (20%).
According to the survey, the top stresses affecting non-pathologist professionals working in clinical labs were:
The diminishing labor pool trained for COVID-19 testing—coupled with high stress/burnout among existing staff—is a major impediment to ongoing expansion in the daily number of molecular COVID-19 tests that can be performed by the nation’s labs.
Also, the already-tight supply of med techs means many metropolitan area labs—particularly hospital labs—are operating with just 75% of the number of staff they are authorized to hire, because there are no techs available. Thus, existing staff are working lots of overtime, and vacant FTE positions are being temporarily filled by MTs placed by employment agencies.
A New York Times (NYT) article in December, titled, “‘Nobody Sees Us’: Testing-Lab Workers Strain Under Demand,” revealed that testing teams across the country are dealing with “burnout, repetitive-stress injuries, and an overwhelming sense of doom.” The article reported on the shortages of supplies needed to perform testing and states there is a “dearth of human power” in the field of pathology as well.
The supply of MTs and CLSs, molecular PhDs, clinical pathologists, MLTs, and other laboratory scientists available to work in the nation’s labs is finite and training programs take years to produce qualified workers to perform laboratory testing.
In the NYT article, microbiologist Karissa Culbreath, PhD (above), Scientific Director, Infectious Diseases at TriCore Reference Laboratories, and Assistant Professor of Pathology at the University of New Mexico, said that when shortages arise, “there are workarounds for almost everything else, but people are irreplaceable.” In addition to the large volume of COVID-19 tests that labs are expected to perform, they also must keep up with the other tests that are sent to them for analysis. Some facilities are even transitioning to 24/7 testing to keep up with the demand. “Labs are trying to maintain our standard of operation with everything else, with a pandemic on top of it,” said Culbreath. (Photo copyright: KOB 4/NBC.)
Should Clinical Lab Workers Be First to Receive the COVID-19 Vaccine?
In the third CAP virtual media briefing, the panel suggested that medical laboratory workers should be among the first to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
“They are encountering and handling thousands of samples that have active live virus in them,” Karger said. “We are getting 10,000 samples a day [for SARS-CoV-2 testing]. That’s a lot of handling of infectious specimens and we do want them to be prioritized for vaccination.”
She added, “From an operational standpoint, we need to keep our lab up and running. We don’t want to have staff out such that we would have to decrease our SARS-CoV-2 testing capacity, which would have widespread impact on our health system and our state.”
Since the pandemic began nearly a year ago, there have been more than 18 million cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the US and more than 300,000 people have died from the virus, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
And, as we move into flu season, the number of new COVID-19 cases is reportedly increasing, which adds more stress to clinical laboratories and their supply chains. As this is unlikely to end anytime soon, clinical lab managers must find new ways to do more with less.
