As the most widespread public health crisis of the past century, SARS-CoV-2 has challenged every part of the world, and every stratum of society. In the US — which, with 8.5 million cases of COVID-19 by mid-October, was the country with the most individuals affected out of the 40.9 million cases reported around the world — the pandemic has stretched all elements of the national, state, and municipal healthcare system. Facing a parallel economic crisis, with demands to return employees to work and students to school, the US has placed enormous pressure on both diagnostic and research laboratories in an effort to process samples from tens of millions of individual COVID tests. A significant portion of that load has fallen on both established public health labs (PHLs) and other

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