Researchers from INGENIO, a joint centre of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), recently published, in collaboration with two co-authors from the University of Sussex (United Kingdom), the effects of an Examina on the organisation of the network of laboratories for carrying out COVID-19 PCR tests during the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain and the United Kingdom and its upcoming implications. The article is published in the journal Innovation.
The e-book shows how the criteria of fitness professionals in Spain (in this case clinical microbiologists in public hospitals) have had more influence on the organization of laboratories than in the United Kingdom. In the latter country, efficiency criteria have been imposed, with experts having less influence on activity decisions. These situations have led to the creation of new centralized mega-labs, dubbed “Lighthouse Labs,” which have been criticized for their high load and low array quality.
“The consequences of these decisions have been very different in the two countries: while in Spain the influence of microbiologists has helped public hospital laboratories to be better prepared now than before the pandemic, in the United Kingdom the gigantic centralised laboratories that were built during the crisis have been dismantled and it turns out that they have not helped to boost the country’s capacities,” says David Barberá, a researcher at INGENIO and one of the authors of the study.
The study is based on 44 interviews conducted with qualified personnel from both countries, from laboratory heads to fitness policy makers to public fitness specialists from both countries, in addition to research on various documents.
“Our research focuses on the discourses and practices used in the two countries that we conceptualize as ‘frontier work’, that is, discourses and practices directed from the laboratories of formulas that had PCR generation but did not meet the criteria established through the logic of fitness professionals. (in Spain) or the logic of efficacy (in the United Kingdom),” explains Enrique Meseguer, a researcher at INGENIO and co-author of the study.
Thus, it was highlighted that while in the United Kingdom the State-funded clinical laboratories limited their volume of tests in favour of Lighthouse Labs, in Spain university or study laboratories were de facto excluded.
This painting is part of the OCTS (Coronavirus Testing Systems Optimization) study task led by the University of Sussex. The task investigated the organization of the test formula in 8 countries during the COVID-19 crisis (United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, South Korea, Africa, Ireland, Australia, and Canada). An interdisciplinary team, made up of specialists in medical innovation, fitness emergencies or epidemiology, met weekly between June 2020 and May 2022 to discuss other facets of pandemic testing formulas in the countries studied.
Research was carried out on issues such as dating between the capacity of the systems and excess mortality in all the countries studied, or the organisation of tests for foreign travel. This comparative chart focusing on Spain and the United Kingdom is the first article published as part of the study project.
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