quality assurance
Special Issue VirologyLarge-Scale, In-House Production of Viral Transport Media To Support SARS-CoV-2 PCR Testing in a Multihospital Health Care Network during the COVID-19 PandemicThe COVID-19 pandemic has severely disrupted worldwide supplies of viral transport media (VTM) due to widespread demand for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) testing. In response to this ongoing shortage, we began production of VTM in-house in support of diagnostic testing in our hospital network. As our diagnostic laboratory was not equipped for reagent production, we took...
BacteriologyHash-Based Core Genome Multilocus Sequence Typing for Clostridium difficile...Pathogen whole-genome sequencing has huge potential as a tool to better understand infection transmission. However, rapidly identifying closely related genomes among a background of thousands of other genomes is challenging. Here, we describe a refinement to core genome multilocus sequence typing (cgMLST) in which alleles at each gene are reproducibly converted to a unique hash, or short string of letters (hash-cgMLST).
Mycobacteriology and Aerobic ActinomycetesImpact of External Quality Assurance on the Quality of Xpert MTB/RIF Testing in Viet NamFollowing the endorsement of the Xpert MTB/RIF assay (Cepheid, Sunnyvale, CA, USA) by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2010, Viet Nam’s National Tuberculosis Control Program (NTP) began using GeneXpert instruments in NTP laboratories. In 2013, Viet Nam’s NTP implemented an Xpert MTB/RIF external quality assurance (EQA) program in collaboration with the U.S.
BacteriologyProficiency of WHO Global Foodborne Infections Network External Quality Assurance System Participants in Identification and Susceptibility Testing of Thermotolerant Campylobacter spp. from 2003 to 2012Campylobacter spp. are foodborne and waterborne pathogens.