Much of Harvard research scales down for safety
This is part of our Coronavirus Update series in which Harvard specialists in epidemiology, infectious disease, economics, politics, and other disciplines offer insights into what the latest developments in the COVID-19 outbreak may bring. Sarah Fortune leads a lab of about 20 scientists who study tuberculosis. The lab at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is in a biosafety level 3 containment facility, so researchers must wear N95 personal respirator masks and full-body Tyvek protection suits to experiment on specimens of the disease that in 2018 killed 1.5 million worldwide. The researchers investigate drug resistance and host response, which is important in preclinical vaccine development. But last week, as the numbers of COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts and the U.S. continued to rise, Fortune had to make a gut-wrenching decision. Her lab came to a complete stop. Scientists saved what data they could and destroyed cultures and other materials they couldn’t, but they didn’t...