Automated equipment boosts virus testing in Shijiazhuang

Automated equipment is playing a critical role in government efforts to carry out mass testing campaigns in a bid to pinpoint COVID-19 infections for isolation and treatment faster and more accurately.

The trend is exemplified by Huoyan Laboratory, which was put into operation on Jan  9 inside a local gymnasium in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, a recent coronavirus hot spot.

The negative pressure isolation labs are white, tent-like inflatable facilities, where tens of thousands of nucleic acid tests are carried out simultaneously by automated arms and other cutting-edge equipment.

The labs are operated by BGI Genomics, a private biotech company based in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, which built the makeshift testing complex in about 20 hours.

The firm also deployed about 400 employees from across the nation to facilitate the testing drive.

Zhao Lijian, vice-president of the company and who now oversees the lab on the ground as the deputy commander, said the automated apparatuses help reduce human involvement, thus lowering the chance of infection and cutting the error rate.

"Traditionally, the task is performed by people, including taking samples out of test tubes," he said. "Human researchers would have difficulty extracting exactly 0.1 microliter."

In addition, the automated machinery, developed by the company to cope with the increasing demand for fast-track testing over the past year, can drive up the testing capacity in the lab in Shijiazhuang to more than 100,000 tubes a day.

Since the lab combines samples from 10 people and tests them for the virus all at once — a practice known as pool testing — Zhao said they can test up to 1 million samples a day, instilling momentum into the city's testing ambition.

Shijiazhuang conducted the first round of tests for its population of 10 million between Jan 6 and 9. To speed up the mission, part of the samples had been shipped to Beijing, Tianjin and Shandong province to tap their testing capacity.

Now with the momentum lent by the fleet of labs, Zhao said the time entailed will be further compressed.

The major steps to test the throat or nose swabs involve disinfecting the samples, transferring the samples to a test panel, extracting the nucleic acid and testing them for the virus.

Liu Xin, deputy head of Shenzhen Huada Gene Research Institute, who oversees the testing procedures at the lab, said automation has been applied throughout the process to improve efficiency.

He noted the high-level automation was achieved through constant analysis of the testing procedures, which help them target crucial junctions to speed up the process.

"We quickly applied automation to extract nucleic acid after finding it a major bottleneck for faster testing," he explained.

"It entails contemplation and making summaries," adding some of the machinery is popular with countries in Europe and the Americas, where testing capacity has been strained by mass outbreaks.

Shijiazhuang authorities are starting to retest the city's population after 354 people tested positive in a previous mass testing drive and promised to finish it in two days, one day shorter than the previous testing.

While speaking at a news conference on Saturday, the city's acting mayor Ma Yujun said the second round of testing will take less time, partly because of the participation of BGI Genomics.