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. 2020 Jul 23;58(8):e01416-20.
doi: 10.1128/JCM.01416-20. Print 2020 Jul 23.

The First Quarter of SARS-CoV-2 Testing: the University of Washington Medicine Experience

Alexander L Greninger  1   2 , Keith R Jerome  3   2
Affiliations

The First Quarter of SARS-CoV-2 Testing: the University of Washington Medicine Experience

Alexander L Greninger et al. J Clin Microbiol. .

Abstract

In early March 2020, the University of Washington Medical Center clinical virology laboratory became one of the first clinical laboratories to offer testing for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). When we first began test development in mid-January, neither of us believed there would be more than 2 million confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections nationwide or that we would have performed more than 150,000 real-time PCR (RT-PCR) tests, with many more to come. This article will be a chronological summary of how we rapidly validated tests for SARS-CoV-2, increased our testing capacity, and addressed the many problems that came up along the way.

Keywords: SARS-CoV-2; Seattle; coronavirus; history; pandemic.

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