The challenge of COVID-19 for a Clinical Microbiology Department.
Diagn Microbiol Infect Dis
; 101(2): 115426, 2021 Oct.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-34217111
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES:
To quantify the workload and cost overload that the COVID-19 pandemic has meant for a Clinical Microbiology laboratory in a real-life scenario.METHODS:
We compared the number of samples received, their distribution, the human resources, and the budget of a Microbiology laboratory in the COVID pandemic (March-December 2020) with the same months of the previous year.RESULTS:
the total number of samples processed in the Clinical Microbiology laboratory in March to December 2020 increased 96.70% with respect to 2019 (from 246,060 to 483,993 samples), reflecting an increment of 127.50% when expressed as samples/1000 admissions (from 6057 to 13,780). The increase in workload was mainly at the expense of the virology (+2058%) and serology (+86%) areas. Despite additional personnel hiring, the samples processed per technician increased 12.5%. The extra cost attributed to Microbiology amounts to 6,616,511 euros (114.8%).CONCLUSIONS:
This is the first study to provide quantitative figures about workload and cost increase caused by the COVID-19 in a Microbiology laboratory.Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Laboratories, Hospital
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Diagnostic_studies
/
Health_economic_evaluation
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Europa
Language:
En
Journal:
Diagn Microbiol Infect Dis
Year:
2021
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
España