Facilities upgrade Shanxi's nucleic acid testing capabilities

North China's Shanxi province recently finished the construction and acceptance check of eight new nucleic acid testing centers in provincial capital Taiyuan city, which is expected to dramatically enhance the region's COVID-19 testing capabilities.

For example, the 194-square-meter nucleic acid testing center in Shanxi Provincial People's Hospital includes a reagent preparation room, rooms for nucleic acid extraction and testing, an analysis room and a decontamination room. It comes equipped with a complete set of biological safety cabinets, nucleic acid extractors and testing machines.

According to Liang Hongping, director of the hospital's clinical laboratory, 51 professionals have been trained to operate the new center, safely providing timely and accurate test results, with test capabilities that have increased about 50 times compared with previous facilities.

The center now can test 10,000 nucleic acid samples per 12 hours and that number can be expanded to 30,000 per day when emergencies occur.

Ren Xiaoqiang, deputy director of the hospital's computer department, said the center's 5G technology allows data from nucleic acid samples that are collected anywhere to be speedily fed to it via the internet, significantly ramping up the testing of residents in Shanxi province.

Currently, the eight nucleic acid testing centers can totally test 300,000 samples every day at most, providing strong technical support and guarantees for Shanxi's emergency responses to the novel coronavirus pandemic.