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Following the introduction of a new cumulative study method for COVID-19 at the Santara clinics this week, 81 groups were tested on 293 human samples and five tested positive.
Cumulative positive coronavirus was detected in six people, the Santara clinics said Friday.
These accumulations were investigated in cooperation with the Municipality of Vilnius City.
According to the clinics, the new method will help ensure the safety of patients treated at the Santara clinics, a safer opening of educational institutions, and faster control of COVID-19 outbreaks.
The cumulative method is already being used for preventive testing of staff and patients at Santara clinics. It is also planned to continue with preventive tests of students and their homes.
It differs from the traditional method in that samples are taken from the anterior nasal cavity rather than the nasopharynx. This procedure is much simpler and causes little discomfort to the subject.
According to Dovilė Ežerskytė, a senior medical biologist at the Santara Clinics Biobank, nasal swabs from five people are placed in a tube with the medium in which the virus remains viable for several days, using the cumulative method. The laboratory performs a routine PCR test on this medium using reagents that have already been tested and approved by their manufacturers for use with nasal samples.
According to Dalius Vitkus, director of the Santara Clinics Center for Laboratory Medicine, the cumulative test is higher than usual in that five subjects are immediately examined during a prophylactic test of a medium tube. A negative cumulative result confirms that none of the five individuals whose nasal swabs were placed in the same tube were detected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
If the combined test is positive, all five people should be retested individually as soon as possible to determine which of them are infected.
Laimonas Griškevičius, head of the Center for Hematology, Oncology and Transfusiology at the Santara Clinics, says that the CRP accumulated several times increases the possibilities of laboratories for the preventive examination of individuals. For example, a laboratory that tests 1,000 people a day can perform a preventive test on 5,000 people at the same time, while reducing the cost of a preventive test multiple times.
“Although fewer new cases of COVID-19 are diagnosed, there is still a risk that the virus will spread. The widespread use of combined preventive PCR tests in education, healthcare and businesses would increase the safety of workers, students , patients and business customers, it would more effectively stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and make it safer to remove quarantine restrictions and warn of new COVID -19 wave hazards, ”explains L. Griškevičius.
