Test times cut while sample numbers rise

Updated, June 18, 2009

ESR's National influenza Centre (NIC) has processed about 700 potential Novel Influenza AH1N1 (09) virus samples since last Thursday. Yesterday more than 350 samples were processed,  the highest number per day in the centre's history. This has included samples from The Cook Islands, Tonga and Samoa. The centre confirmed Western Samoa's first case earlier in the week.

Current turnaround time on a specimen following receipt by the laboratory in the morning has been reduced to about eight hours.

Staff from other ESR sites, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry's Investigation and Diagnostic Centre, and AgResearch have joined NIC staff to provide increased capacity to handle current workloads. National Influenza Centre head Dr Sue Huang said staff were coping well with the increased workloads. "Our staff are committed to ensuring we can provide fast, accurate results to New Zealand and Pacific Island health authorities during this pandemic."

Robotic laboratory equipment is being utilised to analyse the influenza specimens. Results can be generated within hours. The 'EpMotion' machine extracts the nucleic acid of the virus. A separate machine then uses reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) technology to identify whether this is A(H1N1) O9 influenza or not.

The NIC would normally only test samples which had already been confirmed as influenza to confirm the strain but hospitals were overloaded so ESR is now also doing primary tests.