Certificate of completion of external quality assessment of SARS-CoV-2 testing for BMC SAS

The Biomedical Research Center SAS (BMC SAS) voluntarily offered its professional and technical capacities and participated in routine SARS-CoV-2 testing right at the beginning of the pandemic. It was an unprecedented step at the time, which cost us a lot of effort, but it turned out to be the right one. Routine testing continues until now, using Slovak PCR tests, the development and especially validation of which is still being worked on.

In the summer, the test team had the opportunity to participate in an external quality assessment for SARS-CoV-2 testing (EQA), organized by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in collaboration with two extremely prestigious European institutions, the German Charité Berlin and the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). As part of the test, 12 blinded samples, which contained besides SARS-CoV-2 also other human respiratory viruses, were sent to the laboratories.

These days, a certificate was received confirming that the BMC SAS team passed this external quality assessment participated by 70 laboratories. It should also be emphasized that the first version of Slovak vDETECT COVID-19 RT-qPCR test was used in this assessment. In the meantime, the third, improved version has been certified.

“Every such external quality assessment is excellent for us. We are assured that we have all the processes set up correctly, we use quality tests and also that we have a great team of people who do the testing. I really appreciate their commitment and reliability and I am very grateful to them for that,” said Dr. Boris Klempa, whose Department of Virus Ecology covers testing within BMC SAS, on this occasion.

Text and photo: Biomedical Research Center SAS

Translated by: Mgr. Tatiana Šipošová, BMC SAS

On the head photo: Researchers who represent the core of the SARS-CoV-2 testing team of BMC SAS in a joint photograph (from left to right and from bottom to top: Monika Sláviková, Kristína Boršová, Ľubomíra Lukáčiková, Viktória Čabanová, Sabína Fumačová Havlíková, Martina Ličková, Boris Klempa, Juraj Kopáček)