All of the COVID variants identified worldwide — including the more contagious U.K. B.1.1.7 variant, South African B.1.351 variant and the Brazilian P.1 variant — have been discovered in UAB’s Department of Pathology Fungal Reference Lab. The lab, directed by Sixto M. Leal Jr., M.D., Ph.D., has been analyzing 100 samples a week for the Alabama Department of Public Health to help identify which variants are here in Alabama.
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There are currently eight labs in Alabama, including the Fungal Reference Lab at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), decoding COVID-19 DNA. The process is called viral genome sequencing.
“Primary samples are coming from patients in the hospital that test positive for COVID PCR or by COVID antigen tests. And so, a subset of these samples, not every single one, but a subset are being subjected to this novel method called viral genome sequencing,” explained Dr. Sixto Leal, Jr., MD, PhD, Department of Pathology, UAB.
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Sixto is Director of Clinical Microbiology at the Fungal Reference Laboratory and Assistant Professor of Pathology at The University of Alabama at Birmingham. Having developed one of the most sensitive PCR tests in the US, his lab identified the first COVID-19 case in Birmingham, Alabama. Sixto’s lab then expanded its services to support the Alabama GuideSafe Testing Initiative, enabling thousands of students to be tested before returning to campuses across the state. What’s more, his lab isn’t primarily a molecular testing lab – but he put his own research interests aside to help his community and state throughout the pandemic.
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A new covid-19 testing strategy is helping a lab at UAB ramp up capacity tenfold.
The lab will use a pooling method to process 200,000 tests of college students across the state before the start of the fall semester. Those tests are required before students return to many college campuses.
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Before Alabama college students could return to campuses this fall, officials decided that the 200,000 students in the state would need to be tested within weeks of the start of the school year. The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Pathology and several other agencies partnered and found a way to accomplish this daunting task.
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Pathologists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have been a crucial part of battling the COVID-19 pandemic in Alabama.
Testing has been a major cause for concern worldwide ever since the pandemic began, but clinicians and researchers with UAB’s Department of Pathology have been working around the clock to make testing available for as many people as possible, making sure accurate results are available in a timely manner.
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The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s pathology lab is to start testing for COVID-19 using the laboratory’s own test by the end of the week.
“This test should be available by the end of this week and will allow us to begin processing 100 tests per day,” said Dr. Sixto Leal, assistant professor of Pathology at UAB. “We will be testing primarily priority in-patients at UAB Hospital so we can preserve negative pressure rooms. Within three to four weeks, we hope to have 800 tests per day.”
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