Building testing capacity and sequencing capability for COVID-19 at Tifton Veterinary Diagnostic and Investigational Laboratory (TVDIL)

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Project summary: Tifton Veterinary Diagnostic and Investigational Laboratory (TVDIL), located in southern Georgia, is a Level 1 branch Lab of National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN). As a veterinary diagnostic lab, our mission is to detect and report diseases in animals. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, TVDIL obtained its Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) registration and started human COVID-19 testing to answer the needs of a reasonable turnaround time for our rural hospitals and clinics. Between July 2020 to June 30, 2021, over 27,000 COVID-19 real-time RT-PCR tests were performed by TVDIL. Despite the success of serving the local community, this human-testing experience helped us decide what could be done to prepare for COVID-19 testing surge in animal diagnostics, which has not been performed regularly during the pandemic due to state and federal restrictions. The goal of this proposal is to build additional surge capacity and sequencing capability for COVID-19 animal cases. To enhance surge capacity, we propose to acquire a liquid handling system and a real- time PCR system. For building next-generation sequencing (NGS) capability for SARS-CoV-2, we intend to invest consumable reagent & supplies for our newly obtained NGS sequencer as well as hire & train designated personnel for performing the NGS task. While additional equipment will increase the testing capacity instantaneously, sequencing capability relies on dedicated and fully trained staff to operate the NGS system. Ultimately, the testing capacity and sequencing capability built from this project can also be applied to other scenarios such as significant animal diseases outbreak or if there is ever a need to expand human COVID-19 testing in the future.