Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, nations worldwide have vastly expanded their testing capacity by establishing huge networks of diagnostic testing facilities, including the public and private sector, and not-for-profit organizations.

COVID-19 swab samples are sent to these laboratories from front line hospitals and other testing sites, such as drive-through testing centers. With test samples in many countries now numbering many millions per week there is a critical need to quickly and reliably test and keep track of patient samples. Testing laboratories worldwide are challenged by the explosion in sample test numbers where they need to reliably track suspected COVID-19 patient swabs to 2D-coded tubes and then through to racks of 96 tubes. For this task a fast scanner that takes and stores high quality images is the preferred solution for establishing a traceable workflow of scanned patient swab tubes through to RT-PCR ready 2D-coded tube samples.