Last updated 1 July 2020

Welcome to the CRICK COVID19 Operations Team, a team of NHS trust virologists (University College London Hospitals), the NHS trust diagnostic laboratory (HSL), clinician scientists working at the both University College London Hospital NHS trust and the Crick, Crick scientists and Crick leadership.

Introduction

The CRICK COVID19 Consortium commenced on 19 March 2020 in response to the emerging COVID19 pandemic in a collaboration between University College London Hospitals, Health Services Laboratory (HSL), the Institute of Cancer Research and the Francis Crick Institute.

Over 2 weeks, the consortium has set up a high throughput RTPCR COVID19 diagnostics assay in an academic environment. The work is conducted at the Francis Crick Institute as an extension of the accredited laboratories at HSL. The aim has been to minimise dependencies on reagents, in short supply globally, to provide resilience to the pipeline and provide a scale-able platform to screen hundreds to thousands of healthcare workers and patients per day.

The downloadable Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) provide a step-by-step approach to set up a diagnostic pipeline in an academic institute in collaboration with partner laboratories and hospital trusts.