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Swabbing patients – understanding how long it takes for samples to be processed

August 6, 2021

Swabbing patients for COVID-19 and ensuring that screening and streaming processes are undertaken based on clinical presentation and test results is critical in ensuring that we are able to safely manage our patients.

Colleagues are encouraged to take some time to understand the proper processes and turnaround times for COVID-19 swab testing.

Urgent Test Turnaround Time – Once a patient’s COVID swab has arrived in the lab at City Hospital the actual processing time of the sample in the lab is 2 hours. This means that if the swab is taken in the morning (9 am – 12 pm) the overall turnaround time for urgent COVID swabs is around 4-6 hours. This has been the case since the first wave.

If the sample is received in a purple bag, between 9-3 pm then you will likely receive a result on the same day. If the allocation of urgent tests (allocated nationally) has been exceeded the swab will be forwarded to Wolverhampton for routine processing which has a turnaround time of up to 48 hours.

Chasing Results:

Please DO NOT telephone the laboratory for results as this is disruptive and wastes your time and laboratory staff time. Results are available on Unity as soon as the laboratory releases them.

The order status is visible on Unity under ‘Requests/Care Plans’. Samples that have been received in the lab and being processed are shown as ‘InProcess (In-Lab)’.

For patients booked for swabbing via the community contact centre (pods), this should be the first point of contact to confirm the patient attended and was swabbed. It is extremely inefficient for the laboratory to try and search for a missing swab if it has not actually been taken in the first place.

The telephone numbers for the contact centre are:

  • Monday – Friday – 0121 507 2664 option 6
  • Saturday – Sunday – 07816992873

Packaging swab samples – Please ensure swab samples are triple bagged and packaged in the correct manner and as instructed (two clear specimen bags followed by either routine blue bag or urgent purple bag).

Please DO NOT put the request form in the same specimen bag as the actual sample as this causes delays to the processing of the sample.