Virologist who helped ramp up Covid testing honoured

Dr Conall McCaughey, 59, was centrally involved in boosting the number of samples analysed in laboratories from eight a day in February to 1,500 daily now.

He is one of a number of public servants who oversaw unprecedented transformation in Northern Ireland during the pandemic to be recognised.

At stages in the spring Dr McCaughey almost ran out of reagents vital in determining whether a swab was positive.

Dr McCaughey said: “We were doing things in days that would normally take weeks, and in weeks that would normally take six months.

“It has been stressful and also really quite affirming that the system can actually do big things quickly, and bigger things faster, than any of us that work in the system have ever seen or thought possible.”

The consultant virologist at Belfast health trust, from Downpatrick in Co Down, was made an OBE for services to laboratory testing during the emergency.

He said: “I was in a busy work bubble and it came completely out of the blue to me and I am determined to enjoy that a bit.”

He added: “I feel both proud and humbled and very conscious that there are so many people behind us, and in a way I am the man in the frame and really an example rather than the person that made this happen.”

His laboratory was flooded with fresh-faced and enthusiastic new graduate assistants as the crisis ramped up.

Dr McCaughey said: “This is completely unprecedented. To get something as all-encompassing, with such speed and such amount of change.”

The first tests on February 7 were carried out manually.

“Everything has changed so quickly at such a great pace and with a lot of complexity.”

He said a sample could go into five different work streams.

The last week in January and early February was a very intense time.

A lot of his work involved communicating with the other laboratories around the country and a veterinary facility which is also analysing tests.

He said many could never have envisaged a veterinary laboratory becoming involved before the pandemic.

He added: “We have had to spread our eggs in more than one basket so that we have got resilience. In the spring we were at the point of running out of reagents. There were times at very little notice when we were completely changing our methodology.”