Yes, surely for established labs with a culture of competence, care, and conscience, which I am sure is the norm in your parts of the world. I suspect we are f

Yes, surely for established labs with a culture of competence, care, and conscience, which I am sure is the norm in your parts of the world. I suspect we are framing in terms of two different, almost non-intersecting kinds of institution. My impression is of reports of "startup" regional labs which have scaled immediately in a pandemic, reportedly hired off the street (not people whose specific vocation and training and life-choice is toward lab technician or manager or scientist), and have resulted in anecdotal reports -- all heresay technically -- of swabs being left lying about in quantity, picked up off the floor, etc etc etc. To me these reports -- perhaps false -- do not intersect with the concern with detail in a lab that knows how to prevent cross-contamination when running at very high PCR amplifications. I am not bringing any new evidence to this, so I will leave it with clarifying the focus of my concern. I appreciate your standing up for the integrity and integrity-of-process in established labs. -- s/the lab in question/the startup lab in question/ a level or two up