[New Coronary Pneumonia] Are laboratory errors accidental or inevitable?

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Written by: Review Editor Room

2020-07-22 06:00

On Monday (20th), a laboratory staff member of the Center for Health Protection was too tired to confuse the test results of two patients with the new crown pneumonia virus, causing public concern. Although this was an accident, the Centre for Health Protection has also apologized for it, but behind this accident is the inevitable insufficiency of Hong Kong's medical system and improper epidemic prevention. Society must pay attention to it to prevent accidental reappearance.

One of the reasons for this error is that compared with the fully computerized Hospital Authority, the current computer system of the Department of Health is not as ideal, and it still relies more on manual input of data. This increases the chance of error when the number of confirmed cases increases. . The second reason is that the laboratory staff are overloaded or unable to do what they want. On the one hand, there is a shortage of talents in this area in Hong Kong. On the other hand, the recent increase in demand has further highlighted the shortage of personnel, making limited manpower prone to errors under high-load operations. According to the "Review Report on Medical Manpower Planning and Professional Development Strategies" released by the Department of Health in 2017, there will be a gap of 201 medical laboratory technologists this year, and this data does not include the additional demand brought about by the epidemic.

During the epidemic, the Hong Kong virus testing and confirmation procedures and the public's unnecessary testing requirements have made the problem of hand shortages even worse. Ma Chung-yi, the president of the Public Medical Doctors Association, pointed out in a radio program earlier that all new cases must be confirmed by the Department of Health before a final laboratory test. This has greatly increased the workload of the Department of Health inspectors, and the Department of Health is still manually inputting information. Mainly, so increase the chance of error.

After the third wave of the epidemic, the demand for testing has increased sharply. (Photo by Luo Guohui)

Not only save the fire but also cure the root cause

On the other hand, the non-essential testing needs of citizens also make the problem worse. Although expanded detection is an important method to stop the spread, when the government has not yet found a way to increase detection resources, too many non-essential detections increase the risk. For example, Ma Zhongyi pointed out that some private organizations require employees to be tested even if there is a confirmed case in the building where they live, and the result is negative before they can go to work. However, in addition to increasing the current testing burden, this method cannot guarantee the safety of employees and others. Because the test is not a vaccination, employees may be infected after the test. Therefore, instead of allowing employees to continue to enter and exit high-risk locations after testing, it is better to arrange employees to work from home.

This accidental mistake can be described as the inevitable result of the accumulation of many problems. Therefore, society and the government must first alleviate the current labor problem of laboratory staff as much as possible to prevent the next mistake. For example, the government can review the diagnosis procedure with the industry, whether it can allocate the work of the second test to other agencies, or suspend other non-essential tests, in order to balance the accuracy of virus detection and the workload of employees. Another example is whether the government will arrange the order of detection according to priority when it fails to expand its detection capabilities. The government also needs to expand testing resources, such as cooperating with private organizations, including rapid testing technology in university laboratories, and expanding supply to solve demand problems.

This mistake can also be said to be that the outbreak of pneumonia has completely exposed medical problems that were originally hidden, such as manpower shortages and backward computerization, forcing the society to face these problems directly after the epidemic subsides. Therefore, after the government has temporarily weathered the epidemic crisis, it must make drastic medical reforms to prevent the next crisis from coming.

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