UVA Health Independently Develops New COVID-19 Tests

March 19, 2020

Wesley P. Hester, wph8f@virginia.edu

Thanks to a determined, whirlwind effort on the part of a team of physicians and collaboration and support from across the University of Virginia community, UVA Health now is now administering its own COVID-19 tests.

Shortly after the pandemic began spreading across the U.S. weeks ago, UVA Health Laboratory’s efforts to stand up COVID-19 testing hit a wall in the form of severe national shortages of critical reagents needed for the tests.

A call quickly went out to basic research laboratories in the Health System and across the University to find needed reagents and technology. It was answered by an immediate outpouring of donations that enabled UVA Health to develop its own testing and deploy it much sooner than having to wait on commercial supply chains. Testing began on Wednesday.

The new testing capability allows UVA Health to more broadly and immediately advance its service to the public during this crisis and will provide health officials a better idea of the spread of COVID-19 in the Charlottesville area.

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UVA’s experts say they expect to have sufficient testing capacity to support all inpatient testing at UVA Hospital and all UVA clinics. For the immediate future, testing will be performed on patients with signs, symptoms and histories deemed by health care providers to be at high risk for COVID-19 infection. The UVA labs are working hard to build on their success and ramp up to support broader community testing and are working with state and federal officials to obtain the resources needed to do so.

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