A professor in microbiology from Paisley is proud of the role he played in setting up UK's first covid test infrastructure.
Professor Alan McNally says that he knew it was going to be tough but he is proud of what the team he was part of created in such a short space of time.
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The Paisley-born professor was part of the initial team drafted up by the Westminster Government to help set up widespread testing in the country. Professor McNally and a team of volunteers were tasked with quickly creating an infrastructure that would allow 50,000 PCR tests a day.
The former Linwood High pupil is now a professor in Microbial Genomics and works on the evolutionary genomics of pathogenesis and antimicrobial resistance in bacterial pathogens, and is also a staff member at the University of Birmingham.
Speaking to the Paisley Daily Express, Professor McNally, said: “I got a phone call from a senior official within the Westminster Government asking if I could help with creating a test that would be able to roll out to 50,000 people per day. I was there from around March when it was getting worse until I left in June.
“We all got dropped into this building and we were told to create a test that would work, we had never done a PCR test in our lives and there was a lot of pressure from the Government to make it happen.
“I had done a few TV appearances at the time saying that there would be tens, if not thousands, of cases and that the situation was going to be really bad.”
The team behind creating the tests were working ten-hour shifts to get the system up and running as quickly as they could, says Professor Alan McNally.
The Paisley man further said that although it was a stressful time, it was impressive what the team achieved in such a short space of time, however, it was terrifying as they didn’t know the extent of the disease at that point. There were “days it went wrong and others we made progress” according to the professor, but he is proud of what he did.
He said: “Looking back on it now, it was exciting the progress we were making and impressive what we created, however, we were also terrified.
“I would say that I feel slightly proud of what I was part of, however, part of me is slightly tinged with disappointment as I am not sure how much the Government learned from the pandemic. Most of the labs have been returned to pre-pandemic working levels or closed down, we need to make sure that we always have one where if a situation ever like the Covid pandemic rises again we can respond quickly.
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