FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WOWO): A blog post by a medical lab scientist in Fort Wayne talking about a personnel shortage in the fight against COVID-19 has gone viral.

In a Facebook post republished by Input Fort Wayne, Megan Ledford says one reason the US might appear to be behind when it comes to testing for the disease is the fact that there aren’t enough qualified scientists to do the testing.

Ledford works at Parkview Health in Fort Wayne and says Med Lab Scientists require an average of five years of college education and a mastery of a number of medical subjects… and although there are millions of nurses and doctors, there are only around 310,000 lab professionals working in the U.S.

“We are at a severe shortage of testing professionals,” she writes, “and we have been for many years. Our profession is one that tends to hide in the background despite our integral roles in disease research, patient care, treatment, and diagnoses, and this is because we tend to be the introverts or the nerds of healthcare, and we like it this way. Most other healthcare professionals don’t even realize we require five to seven years of college education.”

Read her full blog here.