The challenges of supervising medical laboratories in Corona pandemy

Introduction: With the start of the new corona virus pandemy in 2019 from the city of "Wuhan" in China and confirmation and warning of the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education in February 2020 and considering the importance of timely laboratory diagnosis of the new corona virus, a number of Public and private laboratories gradually took responsibility for the molecular diagnosis of this virus. A review of the events of this era can reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the decisions and actions taken and the challenges of this path in the implementation phase from a supervisory point of view. Method: This study is a review based on the records and information available in the management of laboratories affairs of vice president of treatment of IUMS in connection with the supervision of the laboratories operating within the regulatory area of the said university within the period of March 2020 to the end of July 2022.  The obtained results have been examined in the areas of: testing license, laboratory supervision, data collection, handling of complaints and ethical challenges. Results and Discussion: With the start and continuation of the Covid pandemy and the prediction of increase in the number of cases of the disease and the need to speeding up in the definite diagnosis of suspected Corona virus patients by using paraclinical services including laboratory, the Ministry of Health took actions to use the capacities of the private sector in addition to the public sector. In this way, the laboratories applying for participation in the molecular diagnosis program of the new corona virus entered the field after completing the process of obtaining a license, the framework of which was announced by the health ministry. Due to the fact that a significant number of laboratories with a Covid license are established within the regulatory area of Iran University of Medical Sciences (91 laboratories out of a total of 404 Covid laboratories in the country), the examination of the performance of these laboratories can be a reflection of the general situation of laboratories across the country, including the amount of services provided and the most important supervisory problems, including Quality control and interpretation of results, recording of unconformities and collection, storage and transfer of samples, etc. Also, along with these issues, the importance and necessity of recording and collecting the laboratory diagnosis data of the Covid-19 disease and the problems related to it in this epidemic have been considered and investigated. Among the other important challenges of this era are complaints, the most of which is the involvement of unrelated people in the matter of taking samples for the Covid test and the inconsistency of the results obtained in different laboratories, etc. Considering that the Covid pandemy still continues and improving the situation and solving the existing challenges can have a significant impact on the health of the people, it seems necessary to use the results of this study to solve the problems.