USA Health and Synergy Laboratories partnership to offer surveillance COVID testing for employer groups
The University of South Alabama (USA) Health and Synergy Laboratories announced they have expanded their partnership to offer COVID testing surveillance to employer groups. The recent spike in Covid cases has hit Alabama hard, and it has strained the healthcare infrastructure. Surveillance testing can employers stop the spread of the Delta variant. Since the pandemic began, USA Health and Synergy have already administered 600,000 COVID tests for residents of Coastal Alabama. “Surveillance testing has already been utilized in several different arenas,” explained Brad Pitts of Synergy. “As we have seen local and regional numbers spike from the Delta variant, we anticipate more employer groups wanting to protect employees and quite simply keep their doors open by testing.” “We are excited to expand our ability to offer testing for all local employers through aligning our resources at USA with Synergy Labs,” said Dr. Robert Ross of USA Industrial Medicine. “There are many testing options available in the market we reviewed, but the multiple platforms provided by our partners at Synergy will allow for timely results and keep Mobile working. Pooling options at Synergy will be a cost-effective option for employers, and it is important we offer dependable FDA-approved platforms while not breaking the bank.” One effective strategy for testing large asymptomatic groups is pooling samples. This is a process of combining multiple patients into one test. Brandon Biles, COO of Synergy, explained that this process has already worked in places like athletic groups. “We have been able to pool test for various entities such as athletic programs, which allow for targeted testing within subsets or groups of people within a workout group or position group. I feel this same theory could be used in the workplace as often we are segmented by departments similar to an athletic team,” said Biles. Emily Powers, Molecular Supervisor, said this approach has been practiced for some time and eliminates hours of work with faster turnaround times. Powers stated, “Pooling samples for SARs-Cov-2 testing involves mixing several samples in a “batch” or pooled sample, then testing the pooled sample with a diagnostic test. This approach increases the number of individuals that are tested using the same number of resources. For example, five samples may be tested together, using only the necessary resources for a single test. This method of pooling samples works well when there is a low prevalence of cases, mainly meaning negative results are expected with few positive results.”
