COVID-19 Screening Tests in Faculty of Sciences

The screening tests on COVID-19 should start within two weeks consisting, in a first phase, in about 100 daily analyses, being sequencing and epidemiological screening also foreseen.

The objective of this COVID-19 testing centre is to strengthen the involvement of research units in the diagnosis and control of infection by SARS-COV-2, and will therefore have a capacity to receive and process biological samples, perform RT-PCR tests and at a later stage perform immunological tests. The creation of this COVID-19 CT will imply a greenfield investment, namely a BOX with a level 3 certification (BSL3) which will be installed next to Tec Labs – ULisboa Science Innovation Centre.

In addition to the fast identification of the presence of SARS-COV-2 there will be the capacity to trace in less than 24 hours the epidemiologic origin of the cases, through real-time viral genome sequencing, allowing not only to distinguish “imported” cases from community dissemination cases, and also to identify possible outbreaks of local dissemination of infection. For the Faculty of Sciences this capacity of innovation is possible due to the dynamics and multidisciplinary of their research centres and the strategy implemented in the last five years, particularly by the BioSystems and Integrative Sciences Institute (BioISI), in collaboration with several international entities, and which has allowed new applications and the use of genomic sequencing technology and real-time data analysis.