Virology laboratories in Kazakhstan are ready for coronavirus
Вирусологические лаборатории в Казахстане готовы к коронавирусу 13.03.2020

Laboratories operate in all regions and cities of republican significance in the country and now operate 24/7.

Some time ago, there were incredulous cries from social media users, saying, “We don’t believe that there is no coronavirus in Kazakhstan, probably our doctors just can’t detect it.” They can and how! Everything necessary, starting with the appropriate laboratory, equipment and personnel, is available in the cities and regions of Kazakhstan. A zakon.kz correspondent visited such a medical institution.

Officially, the institution is called the virology laboratory of the National Center of Expertise, branch of the city of Nur-Sultan. It is located near the old railway station in the so-called old part of the city. At first glance, it is not difficult to say that this is the holy of holies for various samples and analyses. The three-story ordinary building, like the area, is old, but looks quite strong. Narrow corridors, wide walls, small rooms.

At the entrance, a nurse met me and my colleagues from the TV channel. She warned that you can’t just walk around the building without a medical mask, cap, shoe covers and gown. The health workers brought all this to us. After that, we were escorted to the second floor, where the head of the laboratory, Ainash Erzhanovna Makusheva, “intercepted” us from hand to hand.

The floor was divided into two parts. One is administrative, where health workers are mainly busy with paperwork. The second is the production compartment. It is there that samples of various viruses, including coronavirus infection (COVID-19), are delivered. But in order to go there, you need to be fully equipped with a special overall with safety glasses and a respirator - doctors jokingly call all this equipment a “spacesuit.” All this is disposable. After leaving the production area it is disposed of.

Usually entry into this part is prohibited for unauthorized persons, but as an exception we were allowed to look at what was happening there. Of course, you are not allowed into the room where the laboratory technician examines the samples, but through the glass doors you can observe how the process takes place. In general, on one side along the corridor are the laboratory rooms themselves; they are connected to each other by special windows through which samples are transferred. On the other side are rooms containing all the necessary equipment and materials, as well as showers. Laboratory assistants are required to take a shower every time after completing a work process. They take off their "spacesuits", put them in bags, hand them over for recycling and go for sanitation.

I ask Ainash Erzhanovna the most important question about whether Kazakh doctors can detect coronavirus, and what do they have for this?

These devices we have are the latest technology,” she points to devices that look like printers. - They are called “amplifiers”, Rotor-Gene, six-thousanders. It is with these devices that we detect RNA coronavirus infection. What is the principle of this device? In general, the RNA-containing virus itself is very small, so this device copies certain sections of the C-DNA. It increases the number of viruses and it turns out that the device detects this.

At the moment, the virology laboratory of the National Center of Expertise of the branch of the city of Nur-Sultan is fully equipped with the necessary equipment and consumables of American, Russian and Chinese origin.

The laboratory is open 24/7. Kazakhstanis need not worry. As soon as we receive a signal, we immediately go to the site with a team that includes a laboratory virologist. We take the fence from the person. The sample is taken from the upper respiratory tract, since the entrance “gate” for coronavirus infection is the upper respiratory tract. Therefore, we take a nasopharyngeal swab from the nose and throat. And in the shortest possible time, observing all cold chains, it is delivered to the laboratory, and after 5-6 hours we issue the results,” Erzhanova clarified.

According to her, similar laboratories operate in all regional centers of Kazakhstan and cities of republican significance. By the way, not only coronavirus infection is determined here, but also all others - these are all types of influenza A, B, subtypes, rhinoviruses, noro/roto/astroviruses, enterovirus infections, as well as viral hepatitis A, B, C, D and E.

In general, the head of the laboratory assures that they are 100 percent ready for coronavirus in Kazakhstan in any scale and quantity. Everything necessary to identify and determine the coronavirus infection COVID-19 is available.

- And if a person feels bad and wants to find out if he has coronavirus, can he come to you? – I ask her finally.

- People can go to the clinic at their place of residence. Next, we receive a notification to “take a smear, collect it,” and we then work it out together with epidemiologists. We are a laboratory, we do tests,” concluded Ainash Erzhanovna.

At the time of writing, the Minister of Health of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Yelzhan Birtanov, announced the first patients in Kazakhstan who were confirmed to have coronavirus. All of them are Kazakhstanis who arrived from other countries.

On March 13, it became known about  two identified cases of coronavirus in Kazakhstan . They arrived from Germany to Almaty. Efforts are now underway to identify contacts of sick people.

Source: Zakon.kz