Daejeon Health and Environment Research Institute Establishes Emergency COVID-19 Testing System... Up to 1,000 Tests Per Day

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The Daejeon City Health and Environment Research Institute is establishing an emergency testing system for the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19).

The City Health and Environment Research Institute announced on the 7th that it is building an emergency COVID-19 testing system to effectively respond to the ongoing cluster infection cases in the region.

The emergency testing system refers to a departmental function conversion and integration structure that performs statutory infectious disease testing and monitoring for prevention during normal times, and switches departmental functions to focus on infectious disease response during emergencies such as COVID-19 outbreaks.

For example, in Daejeon currently, confirmed cases continue to increase in places such as schools, multi-level marketing visits, and medical institutions, resulting in a daily testing volume of 500 to 1,000 cases. In such situations, rapid laboratory diagnostic testing for contact tracing is essential.

Accordingly, the City Health and Environment Research Institute has been operating a 24-hour emergency testing system on weekdays and weekends by deploying personnel experienced in MERS and novel flu testing from the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak and expanding testing staff.

In particular, thanks to the prompt additional acquisition of key equipment such as nucleic acid extractors and the stockpiling of diagnostic reagents through disaster management funds and national government support, the COVID-19 testing capacity has increased from the previous 100 cases to over 1,000 cases, according to the City Health and Environment Research Institute.

Through this, the City Health and Environment Research Institute was able to quickly process the testing volume during the COVID-19 testing of all students at Cheondong Elementary School located in Dong-gu, Daejeon, earlier this month, alleviating concerns of the local community and parents.

Jeon Jae-hyun, head of the City Health and Environment Research Institute, said, “We will do our best to prevent the spread of infectious diseases in the local community due to the prolonged COVID-19 situation by establishing a strong infectious disease testing system for crisis response and deploying specialized personnel.”