News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

Hosted by Robert Michel

News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

Hosted by Robert Michel
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In Australia, Pathology Profession Receives Recognition for Performing 12 Million COVID-19 Tests, Equal to About Half the Country’s Population

Royal College of Pathologists of Australia says the pandemic is ‘suppressed’ to ‘intermittent’ outbreaks, thanks to the dedication of thousands of pathologists, medical scientists, and laboratory professionals

COVID-19 efforts in Australia have achieved a milestone. Pathology laboratories there have performed more than 12 million SARS-CoV-2 tests since the pandemic began. That is an impressive feat and is equal to about half the country’s population of 25.4 million people.

In a column for ABC News, Dr. Debra Graves, MBBS, Chef Executive Officer, Royal College of Pathologists of Australia (RCPA) and Dr. Lawrie Bott, MBBS, Vice President of RCPA, and Chief Medical Officer of Sonic Pathology Australia, described the accomplishment. “Never before has pathology testing made such a clear contribution to the well-being of the community as during this pandemic,” they wrote.

“It is an incredible feat,” they continued. “Australia’s current position of having effectively suppressed the virus to intermittent outbreaks owes much to the year-long dedication and ingenuity of 35,000 pathologists, medical scientists, lab technicians, couriers, phlebotomists, and ancillary personnel.”

Australia Pathology Society Recognizes Accomplishments

Furthermore, Graves and Bott wrote, pathology in Australia deserves recognition for these pandemic-related accomplishments, among others, as well:

Quick Responses to COVID-19 in the Land Down Under

The Doherty Institute (a joint venture of the University of Melbourne and the Royal Melbourne Hospital) offers research, teaching, public health and reference lab services, diagnostics, and clinical care for infectious diseases and immunity.

After receiving the patient sample on Jan. 24, 2020, institute scientists were the first outside China to grow the coronavirus in cell culture, noted a University of Melbourne news release.

Dr. Mike Catton of Doherty Institute putting on a white laboratory coat and safety goggles
“We’ve planned for an incident like this for many, many years, and that’s really why we were able to get an answer so quickly,” Dr. Mike Catton (above), Co-Deputy Director, Doherty Institute and Director of the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL), said in the news release. (Photo copyright: ABC News.)

Doherty Institute researchers also were first to report on immune response to COVID-19, according to a second news release.

Their paper in Nature Medicine, titled, “Breadth of Concomitant Immune Responses Prior to Patient Recovery: A Case Report of Non-Severe COVID-19,” describes the immune response in a 47-year-old COVID-19 positive female who traveled from Wuhan, China, and presented in an emergency department in Melbourne.

Australian researchers were able to respond quickly by using the Sentinel Travelers and Research Preparedness Platform for Emerging Infectious Disease (SETREP-ID) at Royal Melbourne Hospital.

“When COVID-19 emerged, we already had ethics and protocols in place so we could rapidly start looking at the virus and immune system in great deal,” Dr. Irani Thevarajan, Infectious Disease Physician, Doherty Institute, Royal Melbourne Hospital, said in the second news release.

“Our study provides novel contributions to the understanding and kinetics of immune responses during a non-severe case of COVID-19. This patient did not experience complications of respiratory failure or acute respiratory distress syndrome, did not require supplemental oxygenation, and was discharged within a week of hospitalization, consistent with non-severe but symptomatic disease,” Thevarajan and co-authors wrote in Nature Medicine.

Drive-Through COVID-19 Testing Sites in Australia

Also impressive was Australia’s launch of drive-through COVID-19 testing on March 9, 2020, before the pandemic was declared by WHO on March 11.

The COVID-19 testing site in Adelaide, South Australia, was “believed to be a first for the country’s public health system,” ABC News reported.

Was it the first worldwide? Possibly. In “Sean Penn’s Foundation Partners with Healthcare Providers in Four States to Offer Drive-Thru COVID-19 Molecular and Serological Clinical Laboratory Specimen Collections,” Dark Daily reported on COVID-19 drive-through testing sites opening in May, 2020, in four states in the United States with the help of Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE), which was founded by Penn following the January 12, 2010, earthquake in Haiti. The non-profit foundation began planning for the drive-through specimen collection sites in April of 2020.

Public Recognition for Medical Laboratories has Global Reach

The COVID-19 response and scientific contributions by pathology laboratory scientists and researchers in Australia are noteworthy. It is also significant that Australia’s pathology professional society sought recognition for medical laboratory workers by detailing their accomplishments during the pandemic and sharing them in media with national and global reach.

—Donna Marie Pocius

Related Information:

Australia Has Recorded 12 Million COVID Tests, and We’re the Envy of the World

Melbourne Scientists First to Grow and Share Novel Coronavirus

Melbourne Researchers Show the Body’s Ability to Fight Novel Coronavirus

Breadth of Concomitant Immune Responses Prior to Patient Recovery: A Case Report of Non-Severe COVID-19

First Drive-Through Coronavirus Testing Station Opens in South Australia

Sean Penn’s Foundation Partners with Healthcare Providers in Four States to Offer Drive Thru COVID-19 Molecular and Serological Clinical Laboratory Specimen Collections

MedStar Health Latest Victim in String of ‘Ransomware’ Attacks on Hospitals and Medical Laboratories That Reveal the Vulnerability of Healthcare IT

Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center makes headlines by opting to pay bitcoin ransom in order to quickly regain control of its computer systems

In recent weeks, hackers temporarily shut down MedStar Health—one of the biggest healthcare systems in the Washington, D.C. region—in the latest example of why cyberattacks are a threat not only to hospitals, but to anatomic pathology labs and clinical laboratories as well.

This latest incident is another example of a “ransomware” attack in which cybercriminals lock out computer users from accessing critical records and files. They then extort money by posting a digital ransom note warning users they must pay a ransom amount within a specific number of days if they want the digital key that will release their data.

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Virus Attacks Hospital’s Medical Laboratory Department Computers, Crippling Workflow and Spreading to Other Departments

Incident highlights need for anatomic pathology and clinical laboratories to protect computer and LIS systems from hackers and malware

Anatomic pathology labs and clinical laboratories that continue to run Microsoft Windows XP on their computer systems now have a real threat to address. In Australia, the computers in a hospital’s medical laboratory were infected in January with a computer virus that shut down the system. To maintain clinical services, the lab staff was forced to use paper-based methods, among other solutions.

The computer virus crippled the pathology department at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and spread throughout the hospital system by targeting computers running Microsoft Windows XP. This is a 14-year-old operating system that Microsoft no longer supports.

According to a story in iTnews, the Qbot malware first infected computers in Royal Melbourne Hospital’s pathology department in mid-January, handcuffing the pathology department. Staff was forced to develop manual workarounds to process specimens and to record and communicate results. (more…)

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