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Review
. 2023 Apr 11;9(2):21.
doi: 10.3390/ijns9020021.

Newborn Screening in a Pandemic-Lessons Learned

Matej Mlinaric  1   2 , James R Bonham  3   4 , Viktor Kožich  5 , Stefan Kölker  6 , Ondrej Majek  7 , Tadej Battelino  1   2 , Ana Drole Torkar  1   2 , Vanesa Koracin  8 , Dasa Perko  9 , Ziga Iztok Remec  9 , Barbka Repic Lampret  9 , Maurizio Scarpa  10 , Peter C J I Schielen  3 , Rolf H Zetterström  11   12 , Urh Groselj  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Newborn Screening in a Pandemic-Lessons Learned

Matej Mlinaric et al. Int J Neonatal Screen. .

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic affected many essential aspects of public health, including newborn screening programs (NBS). Centers reported missing cases of inherited metabolic disease as a consequence of decreased diagnostic process quality during the pandemic. A number of problems emerged at the start of the pandemic, but from the beginning, solutions began to be proposed and implemented. Contingency plans were arranged, and these are reviewed and described in this article. Staff shortage emerged as an important issue, and as a result, new work schedules had to be implemented. The importance of personal protective equipment and social distancing also helped avoid disruption. Staff became stressed, and this needed to be addressed. The timeframe for collecting bloodspot samples was adapted in some cases, requiring reference ranges to be modified. A shortage of essential supplies and protective equipment was evident, and laboratories described sharing resources in some situations. The courier system had to be adapted to make timely and safe transport possible. Telemedicine became an essential tool to enable communication with patients, parents, and medical staff. Despite these difficulties, with adaptations and modifications, some centers evaluated candidate conditions, continued developments, or began new NBS. The pandemic can be regarded as a stress test of the NBS under real-world conditions, highlighting critical aspects of this multidisciplinary system and the need for establishing local, national, and global strategies to improve its robustness and reliability in times of shortage and overloaded national healthcare systems.

Keywords: COVID-19; NBS; contingency plan; dried blood spot; newborn screening; pandemic; telemedicine.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Problems seen during the COVID-19 pandemic in newborn screening (created with BioRender.com (BioRender, Toronto, ON, Canada)).
Figure 2
Figure 2
A summary of contingency plans proposed for performing newborn screening during the COVID-19 pandemic. Legend: NBS—newborns screening, DBS—dried blood spot, and IT—information technology. * The samples should be retaken if they are taken before the given time frame or if taken incorrectly, and this is already seen at the hospital (created with BioRender.com (BioRender, Toronto, ON, Canada)).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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