Science - USA (2020-03-20)

SCIENCE

PHOTO: MICHAEL FISCHER/CC-BY-NC

NEWS | IN BRIEF

The health emergency reverberated as far as the Arctic and into other fields,

such as artificial intelligence. Read more at sciencemag.org/tags/coronavirus.

Dispatches from the COVID-19 crisis

INFECTIOUS DISEASE

Enforce distancing, experts say

PUBLIC HEALTH | Infectious disease

experts across the United States called

this week for officials to carry out tougher

enforcement of social distancing measures

to slow the spread of the virus, including

closing schools and nonessential busi-

nesses nationwide. Such moves would go

beyond the patchwork of closures now in

place in some states and major cities. In

an open letter circulated on Twitter and by

email, more than 370 scientists called for

“immediate action on the part of national,

state, municipal, and local governments to

enforce social distancing in order to truly

minimize contact among individuals.”

Travel rules snarl Arctic research

POLAR SCIENCE | Travel restrictions

imposed last week by Norway’s Svalbard

archipelago to limit the spread of the

coronavirus forced the cancellation of

research flights in support of the Polarstern,

the ice-bound German research ship that is

the centerpiece of a $150 million, yearlong

scientific mission to the Arctic. The flights,

slated to take off from Svalbard in March

and April, were to collect key data that

would have complemented ground-level

observations by ship-based researchers with

the project, the Multidisciplinary drifting

Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate.

The flights had to be canceled after Svalbard

banned entry of nonresidents. The restric-

tions also threaten a planned rotation in

April of 100 researchers onto the ship, which

has not reported any cases of COVID-19.

RNA vaccine testing begins

IMMUNOLOGY | A healthy volunteer in

Seattle this week became the first person

in the United States to receive an experi-

mental vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the

virus that causes COVID-19. Developed by

Moderna Therapeutics and the U.S. National

Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,

the vaccine delivers messenger RNA that

codes for a protein found on the surface of

SARS-CoV-2. The company plans to enroll

45 healthy people aged 18 to 55 in the phase

I study to test the vaccine’s safety and the

immune response it triggers. Researchers

in China earlier this month announced they

had begun to test another experimental

vaccine, though they did not detail its com-

position. A second China vaccine trial was

approved to start this week as well, using a

harmless adenovirus that makes SARS-CoV-

2’s spike protein.

Trove of virus papers debuts

PUBLISHING | Hoping that artificial intel-

ligence can yield new insights into the

COVID-19 pandemic, White House science

officials unveiled a database this week

that pulls together more than 29,

articles on SARS-CoV-2 and other corona-

viruses, including the machine-readable

full text of more than 13,000 papers. The

project, which involves Microsoft, the

Allen Institute for AI, the U.S. National

Institutes of Health, and five other organi-

zations, is offering $1000 prizes to teams

that use the data to answer questions such

as the virus’ origin.

THREE QS

Academic lab aids virus testing

Faculty and staf members, graduate

students, and postdocs at the University

of Washington (UW), Seattle, School

of Medicine got an unusual email last

week. The department of laboratory

medicine was overwhelmed by demand

for processing samples using the

COVID-19 test it had developed. It asked

staf who could switch from their regular

duties or use of time to help, even as the

university’s inperson classes were halted.

Geof rey Baird, interim chair of laboratory

medicine, told Science about a situation

that additional academic labs could face

as demand for testing escalates.

Q: How much COVID-19 testing

are you doing now?

A: The day the [U.S. Food and Drug

Administration] allowed us to do testing,

we started of at about 100 tests a day

and have ramped up to 1600 [as of

11 March]. Our plan is within 3 weeks to be

able to do 7000 tests a day, at least.

Q: What prompted this call for help?

A: We’ve been able to optimize our

assay to where [it] is no longer the

slowest thing [in the process]. The

actual stopping block is the number

of people who can receive and accept

samples. It isn’t highly technical work,

but it’s critical to the ef ort, because

we cannot provide a meaningful clinical

turnaround time—which has to be less

than 12 hours—with the huge backload

of just piles of specimens that would

come in together. [The test kit is] a

nasopharyngeal swab. We have to make

sure it’s appropriately labeled, enter

stuf into the computer, and do some

minor processing steps to hand of the

sample to the [UW] technologists who

are licensed to actually do the testing.

Q: Did the call for help work?

A: Within the f rst day, we got over

130 responses [from UW volunteers],

and I believe we’re still getting more.

It’s been very, very heartening. We have,

still, a need. We’re going to need to keep

doing this for weeks and weeks, if not

months. And I’m not getting new full-

time employees for the lab. We’re at

100 meters and we’re sprinting, but

there’s a marathon left.

The ski-equipped German aircraft Polar 6 was to make a series of Arctic research flights over the next month.

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