SafeWork Laboratories COVID-19 Testing Lab in Western Australia

The question many of our clients have been asking is “does Safework Laboratories have the scope to test for COVID-19”? Over the past few weeks, our team in Western Australia have been working around the clock constructing a new laboratory, hiring new scientists, and applying for a brand-new NATA accreditation.

We are excited to announce that in this short time, NATA has granted SW Labs with a full accreditation enabling us to test for COVID-19. Testing has since initiated in Western Australia with much success.

A laboratory constructed in record time

One of the main orchestrators of this project was Angelina Crabtree our Quality Manager.

“Accreditation for the new laboratory was sought in record time and successfully obtained by a mammoth effort of the SW Lab’s team.

The challenges presented to us all were numerous but with such a competent, efficient, and collaborative effort we persevered. I am very proud to lead the new laboratory!”

The gold standard of testing

Angelina worked closely with Dr Phil Tynan on this project who states that Polymerase Chain reaction (PCR) of deep nasal and oropharyngeal swabs specimens are the gold standard choice for the diagnosis of a COVID-19 coronavirus infection.

Why Antibody tests can be unreliable

“Antibody tests are unhelpful in the acute diagnosis of COVID-19 infections and will miss the early stages of the disease when the donor will be infectious (i.e., poses a risk) to other, as-yet uninfected people.
Any elderly or immunocompromised donors may take some time to develop antibodies to the COVID-19 virus, and some may never develop antibodies at all, despite having the disease and being infectious. There is also the problem of cross-reactions with IgM antibodies to the virus giving rise to false positive results.
In contrast, PCR testing suffers from none of these problems and detects the gene sequences of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the virus causing COVID-19) early in the disease, when a donor is infectious.”(RCPA media release 1/4/20)

As a company, we aim to be the best corporate citizen we can be. This new venture not only enables us to protect economies and create job positions, but importantly helps save lives.