July Statewide Laboratory Advisory Meeting

The Statewide Laboratory Advisory Meeting was held at noon on Monday, July 10, 2023.

Ben & Dr. Iwen spoke of the decision to discontinue sending media out to sentinel laboratories (see Motility, Urea, and Biochemicals this page).

A presentation was given on West Nile Virus by Jeff Hamik MS, Vector-Borne Disease Epidemiologist, and Becky Bonacci MLS, Assistant State Training Coordinator. Jeff talked about surveillance, collection and separation of the mosquitoes, and Becky talked about testing at NPHL.

Current outbreaks in Nebraska were also discussed by Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.

For each meeting, a different topic will be presented. August's topic will be Opioid Biosurveillance program at NPHL.

Motility, Urea and Biochemicals at NPHL

In years past, Nebraska Public Health Laboratory has provided our sentinel laboratories with motility and urea media. In addition, some laboratories have also been provided with biochemicals such as oxidase and indole.

Unfortunately, federal funding is no longer available to NPHL to support this activity and therefore supply of these media and reagents to laboratories will be discontinued.

One more shipment of media will be sent out in August to sentinel laboratories. This will allow laboratories time to inquire about purchasing their own commercial media and biochemicals as needed.

In situations where laboratories are not able to perform these phenotypic tests and thus unable to rule-out a biothreat agent, consult with NPHL to determine next steps for testing.

NPHL will continue to re-evaluate this and if a change is needed in the future, NPHL will communicate any decision made to support this activity.

Upcoming Events:

• Statewide Laboratory Advisory Meeting, second Monday, every month

• Gram Stain Challenge, end of August 2023



• LRN-B BT Wet Workshop, September 14, 2023, North Platte
• Contact NPHL for more information!

• LRN- B BT Wet Workshop, September 21, 2023, Omaha
• Contact NPHL for more information!

• Nebraska Challenge Set Exercise, September

What's New at NPHL?

The Wastewater Surveillance and Genomics Program has moved to Nebraska Public Health Laboratory.

This program is a collaboration between NPHL, UNL, Nebraska wastewater treatment facilities, and state and local health departments.

Currently, the program monitors SARS-CoV-2 and genotypes its variants circulating in the population.