Harvard medical community steps up to fight pandemic
COVID-19 has changed the way we live. For a few, like Annie Cheng, it’s also practically changed where they live. “I have a completely different lifestyle now,” she said. “Pretty much the lab is my home.” Cheng, the lead technologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s molecular diagnostics lab, is among those toiling to transform it from a regular 7 a.m.‒5 p.m., five-day-a-week operation into one of New England’s foremost hospital-based testing centers for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The lab has super-charged its capacity. It recently performed 1,000 tests in a day and can do as many as 1,500, an entire season’s worth of flu diagnostics. This has meant longer hours for everyone, new testing machines, and redesigned procedures to keep workers safe. But the real game-changer has been the influx of skilled volunteers from Beth Israel’s research labs, which were closed after social-distancing edicts went into effect. “Ordinarily, we have a...