TY - JOUR T1 - External Quality Assessment (EQA) for Molecular Diagnostics of Zika Virus: Experiences from an International EQA Programme, 2016–2018 AU - Donoso Mantke, Oliver AU - McCulloch, Elaine AU - Wallace, Paul S. AU - Yue, Constanze AU - Baylis, Sally A. AU - Niedrig, Matthias AB - Quality Control for Molecular Diagnostics (QCMD), an international provider for External Quality Assessment (EQA) programmes, has introduced a programme for molecular diagnostics of Zika virus (ZIKV) in 2016, which has been continuously offered to interested laboratories since that time. The EQA schemes provided from 2016 to 2018 revealed that 86.7% (92/106), 82.4% (89/108), and 88.2% (90/102) of the participating laboratories reported correct results for all samples, respectively in 2016, 2017, and 2018. The review of results indicated a need for improvement concerning analytical sensitivity and specificity of the test methods. Comparison with the outcomes of other EQA initiatives briefly summarized here show that continuous quality assurance is important to improve laboratory performance and to increase preparedness with reliable diagnostic assays for effective patient management, infection and outbreak control. KW - Zika virus KW - mosquito-borne flavivirus KW - emerging arbovirus KW - outbreak control KW - molecular diagnostics KW - laboratory preparedness KW - assay standardization KW - external quality assessment KW - EQA KW - QCMD KW - 610 Medizin und Gesundheit PY - 2018 LA - eng PB - Robert Koch-Institut JO - Viruses VL - 10 IS - 9 SP - 1 EP - 7 DO - 10.3390/v10090491 ER -