With confirmed cases popping up in many places, "Have you had your nucleic acid test" has become one of the daily greetings of Cantonese people. Many people think that nucleic acid testing is just like routine blood tests, but instead they find out...
What is going on? Professionals have the answer: the real nucleic acid test is not as simple as you think!
1, to the designated place sampling
Generally, nucleic acid sampling is performed at designated locations.
2. Send the specimen to a specific laboratory for testing
General sampling points and testing points are not together, it is impossible to pick a send a, so here is a little delay.
Then again, someone said, can not be tested at the sampling site?
Of course not! Nucleic acid testing is extremely sensitive and precise experiments, nucleic acid testing laboratory has special environmental requirements, not just open up a place to test.
3、After signing for the specimens, one by one, disassembled and entered into the system
In tight packaging, specimens are escorted to the laboratory, and to be signed for by the laboratory, entered into the information system. This step requires one by one unpacking, and is a double sealed package, not to mention thousands of packages, each also spray alcohol, good biosafety protection ......
With a "drop", the specimen information will be entered into the system, docking health code. This period is all manual, not much faster than sampling. Especially in a large number of specimens, but also to ensure that 0 errors, can not be incorrect, if the information recorded at the end of the record found less or not the right number, and have to find again.
4, extraction of nucleic acid, like "peanut" as the detection of viruses
Specimens to the laboratory, you can directly test? No! Need to pre-treatment of the specimen, the specimen inside the nucleic acid extraction, in order to carry out amplification.
If the nucleic acid extracted from the specimen is treated as a piece of land, and the new coronavirus is compared to peanuts, how do you know if there are peanuts among the many elements that make up the land?
Then whole some fertilizer and water, let the peanut grow, one becomes two, two becomes four, four becomes eight ...... so it will be easy to know.
Similarly, the virus is invisible, and trace specimens are not easy to detect, so let it become more, to facilitate detection.
This process, health care workers still have to unscrew the lid one by one, using a spiking gun to absorb specimens for nucleic acid extraction - unscrew a thousand lids in a row, poke a thousand guns to absorb a thousand specimens, and then knock off a thousand guns, screw on a thousand lids
5、Preparation of reagents in a completely 0-contamination environment
This step is completely 0 pollution, strictly and precisely operated, how many specimens are dispensed with how many reagents, how many EP tubes, and again the workload of thousands of guns. And all manual dispensing, but also good protection.
6, the addition of samples to be fast, accurate, stable, but also 0 errors!
This step is still fully manual, the medical staff needs to concentrate on the whole process to ensure 0 mistakes! And the extracted nucleic acid is easily contaminated and easily degraded, so the operation should be more absolutely cautious.
At the same time, the extracted nucleic acid only needs to be added into the reagent system for amplification by 5ul. 5ul what concept? A tenth of a drop of water, with a very small gun tip can only see the head of that little, and also requires the operation process: fast! Steady! Accurate!
7, on the machine detection, "start" can not stop
This process takes 1-2 hours, and once the instrument starts the amplification process can not stop midway to add new specimens, you must wait for the results of this batch of amplification is complete, in order to carry out the next batch of specimens amplification.
Therefore, this is one of the reasons why nucleic acid testing cannot be done on the fly, because once the instrument is turned on, it cannot be stopped and must be run through this batch before the next batch can be performed.
But is it enough to do all of the above? No! In each test, you also need to add a variety of negative controls, positive controls, quality control, saline control to monitor the quality of the entire process of this experiment to ensure the reliability and accuracy of the test results. After all, the experimental process is too many steps, there are too many potential interference factors, so it is necessary to take such measures in each batch to ensure the quality of the test.
After the results come out, you also need to view the results, check the specimen information, results release, data transmission (that is, send the green code).
And while the instrument is running, the testers can't take a break, a new batch of specimens is coming in, and they have to start recording information, lifting nucleic acids, and adding samples ...... simply can't stop!
For the sake of your green code, everyone is "working hard"
Despite the tedious process and the many factors affecting it, please rest assured that the medical and nursing staff have undergone strict theoretical operational training and assessment, and are all licensed to work.
In the midst of the epidemic, all staff members canceled their breaks and gave their full support to nucleic acid testing to minimize the time it took to get the results. In this way, day by day, everyone cooperated with each other to ensure that the nucleic acid test results were issued on time under super logical arrangements.
Let's join hands to fight the epidemic and overcome the difficulties together!
