“You guys are good at swabs!” Setting up a staff and patient coronavirus testing service using existing sexual health service infrastructure in a large regional teaching hospital

Introduction: Early in the response to the coronavirus pandemic, our large Teaching Hospital asked our Sexual Health Service (SHS) team to set up a facility to test symptomatic staff and their contacts, for the 16000+ staff in the Trust Here we describe the process and results Methods: The SHS team used existing staff, IT facilities and estates to set up a testing service within 24hrs of being approached We used our existing Inform EPR, which we altered with permission Hospital Staff, or their household (including children), who were symptomatic of covid-19 were booked electronically for a test by SHS admin team SHS nursing staff performed testing using a specially set up drive-through facility in the car park of our existing building The service ran in the afternoon/evening, allowing ongoing emergency SHS work to continue in the mornings Tests were ordered and returned electronically SHS staff used text messaging to deliver results and appropriate actions within 24hrs of swab being taken From June 2020, we began contact tracing for positive staff and their contacts, using established Partner Notification skills in our health advising team The service also took on testing of self-isolating pre-oper-ative patients Results/discussion: From 1st April to 20th July 2020 we performed 6025 tests, of which 4022 were in staff or their household contacts The overall positivity rate in staff was 9 6% (with a peak of 24% in mid April) Patient testing positivity rate was extremely low at 0 1% Where staff or their contacts were coronavirus negative and able to attend work again, we estimate that we saved the Trust around 13 500 work days, a significant consideration both financially and operationally Feedback from staff was universally positive We were able to demonstrate that SHS staff and facilities have important transferable skills/resource in response to the unprecedented challenge of Covid-19