Supporting scale-up of COVID-19 RT-PCR testing processes with discrete event simulation.

ABSTRACT: Testing is critical to mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic, but testing capacity has fallen short of the need in the United States and elsewhere, and long wait times have impeded rapid isolation of cases. Operational challenges such as supply problems and personnel shortages have led to these bottlenecks and inhibited the scale-up of testing to needed levels. This paper uses operational simulations to facilitate rapid scale-up of testing capacity during this public health emergency. Specifically, discrete event simulation models were developed to represent the RT-PCR testing process in a large University of Maryland testing center, which retrofitted high-throughput molecular testing capacity to meet pandemic demands in a partnership with the State of Maryland. The simulation models support an

SUBMITTER: El Hage J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8321135 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature