Pandemic Accreditation: How Accreditation Can Help in the Fight Against SARS CoV-2

SARS CoV-2 Wastewater Testing - State of the Science
Oral Presentation

Prepared by N. Slawson
A2LA, 5202 Presidents Court, Suite 220, Frederick, Maryland, 21703, United States


Contact Information: [email protected]; 240-575-7495

ABSTRACT

In March of 2020 the world went into quarantine to fight the growing SARS Cov-2 pandemic. During this time, COVID testing spiked and many labs began to create SOPs, train technicians, and run tests to help fight back against this emerging pathogen. Labs have helped fight back in two ways, by testing actual COVID samples for the virus, and in helping test wastewater to try and create a better surveillance system for the virus. With the immediate need for both tests, labs have been mostly performing testing on their own accord. This has led to more difficulty in creating standardization across testing labs in relation to COVID testing. This is where accreditation comes into play.
Accreditation has been used in a wide variety of industries to help labs in standardizing methodology, ensuring valid results that can be compared, and also in helping promote competency amongst participating labs. Various industries such as AOAC, FCC, and even TNI have utilized accreditation to a standard for the vary reasons stated above. While there is no specific standard for COVID testing, the tests themselves can be done under the TNI standard or the ISO 17025 standard. This will help labs with: reporting results that can be compared to help discover trends and map data to further fight back against COVID, creating procedures and processes that are standardized to help with reference materials and procedure creation to aid labs in performing the test the best way possible, and also will help promote competent testing in a world where COVID testing competency is needed more than ever.