RE: Next time12 Oct 2020 15:29
“Rapidly testing admissions for SARS-CoV-2 at the point of care is essential for reducing COVID-19 transmission in hospitals, speeding up access to urgent care and allowing safe discharge to care homes. It could make all the difference in a few months’ time.” “Use of point-of-care testing would speed up the identification of patients for COVID-19 clinical trials, and receiving an experimental treatment a day earlier could make a clinical difference.” “Hospitals across the UK, as well as care homes and prisons, could benefit from SAMBA II devices,” said Gupta, from the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology & Infectious Diseases (CITIID). “Given the technological capital of the UK we should not be falling so short on rapid point-of-care testing.” Standard tests are sent for analysis in central laboratories, where backlogs can see delays of two days or more. SAMBA machines can produce a diagnosis in as little as 90 minutes. Dr Helen Lee, CEO of Diagnostics in the Real World, developed the SAMBA II technology while at Cambridge’s Department of Haematology. The chemistry behind the machines has been used for on-the-spot HIV diagnostics across Africa. The devices search for tiny traces of virus genetic code, and are extremely sensitive in the detection of active infections. Once nose and throat swabs have been loaded into a SAMBA machine, the process is fully automated, making them easy to use. The initial ‘COVIDx’ clinical study led by Gupta at Addenbrooke’s with 149 participants found SAMBA II had 96.9% sensitivity (accurate identification of positive cases) and 99.1% specificity (accurate identification of negative cases) compared to the standard lab test. It was also around 24 hours faster. The success of the COVIDx study saw the hospital switch nearly all of its SARS-CoV-2 testing from the standard lab ‘RT-PCR’ tests over to the use of SAMBA II during May: an opportunity for a “real-world” comparison and its effect on hospital functioning. Gupta and colleagues compared data from the electronic patient records of all those who had in-hospital tests done in the ten days before and then after the switch to SAMBA devices at CUH.
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