Last week, the first medical laboratory received accreditation for COVID-19 testing according to the internationally used standard ČSN EN ISO 15189:2013. This is a workplace of Palacký University in Olomouc, the Laboratory of Experimental Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Prague and the University Hospital Olomouc at the Institute of Molecular and Translational Medicine. The laboratory's accreditation was newly expanded to include the use of the Real Time PCR technique for diagnosing SARS-CoV-2 from nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs. This diagnostic technique is recommended by WHO for direct detection of SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid in the acute phase of the disease, i.e. for the investigation of COVID 19.
Several other procedures have already been initiated at the request of the entity to expand the scope of accreditation to include SARS-CoV-2 testing. CAI is thus flexibly responding to the requirements of medical laboratories.