As New York City enters a dangerous new phase of the pandemic, city officials are relying on significantly expanded testing capacity driven by the opening of its own COVID-19 testing lab three months ago.
The Manhattan lab, located on the 12th floor of a science complex at First Avenue and East 29th Street, is arguably the city’s biggest weapon in the fight against the second wave of the pandemic: It can currently test 20,000 people a day.
Within a month, that number could increase to testing as many as 100,000 people a day. Combined with all the labs, the city is currently testing about 75,000 to 100,000 people per day. Early in the crisis, they could only test a few hundred samples a day.
The lab's turnaround time is relatively quick. Results are available approximately 11 and a half hours after sample processing.
After a brief tour Wednesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio reminded reporters that the lab, known as the Pandemic Response Lab, is the result of an initiative by the city's Economic Development Corporation. Officials solicited and reviewed eight proposals this spring. Among them, they chose Opentrons, a small robotics company based in Brooklyn, because of its ability to get the facility up and running quickly and relatively cheaply — $28 per test, compared with $100 charged by the national private lab.
In the summer, when New York City's test turnaround times were strained by increased demand across the country, supply issues focused on replenishing reagents and the chemical ingredients needed to process the tests. The city's pandemic response laboratory currently has a three-month supply of reagents.
“This is a homegrown solution,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday afternoon after touring the facility.
In addition to meeting a surge in demand brought on by the holidays, the city's testing capacity has also increased as the city's roughly 190,000 public elementary and special education students prepare to return to classrooms next week. Under the new reopening plan, 20% of students will be tested weekly, a feat the mayor said would not be possible without the new labs.
City officials said students who were tested Monday should receive their test results no later than Wednesday.
Looking ahead, de Blasio said the lab is "the beginning of a much larger effort" to prepare the city for future global health challenges, taking into account the large number of respected hospitals and research institutions that make it a "The Public Health Capital of the United States." world. "
City officials on Thursday formally announced the creation of a new pandemic response institute that will expand beyond laboratory work and into outbreak training and research. The institute will initially be housed in the same scientific complex as the laboratory. The city expects to select an organization to run it starting next year.
The facility has about 110 employees, but much of the testing processing is performed by robots. To help speed turnaround, tests are also aggregated, a method of grouping samples together and testing them as a whole.
The lab only performs PCR tests, or "polymerase chain reaction," a method that detects and amplifies minute amounts of the virus's genetic material.
PCR tests are generally considered the gold standard for coronavirus testing. According to Opentrons, the technology used by the pandemic response laboratory is among the most sensitive for detecting traces of the virus.
Unlike the New York State Health Department, the city currently only reports PCR test results. But Dr. Jay Varma, the mayor's senior health adviser, said Wednesday that health officials plan to post antigen results on their website soon. City officials estimate that about 4,000 to 5,000 antigen tests are being administered to New Yorkers each day. However, the results are less reliable than PCR testing.
During the visit, reporters were able to inspect various automated processes at close range. Robotic arms enclosed within glass cabinets extract, move and prepare samples from glass vials into plastic trays with a speed, volume and precision that humans cannot match.
"Scientifically, it's the same process," Opentrons co-founder Will Canine said. "We've just put it into use, so it's faster and cheaper."
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