Big Questions
about COVID-19 Faculty and alumni experts answer “big picture” questions about the pandemic and public health.
In a matter of months, the novel coronavirus has dramatically changed how we live, work, eat, learn, travel, and socialize. Public health has been an integral part of responding to the crisis and shaping how we move forward into a new reality, yet many aspects about the virus remain unknown. We asked several faculty and alumni experts “big picture” questions about how the COVID-19 pandemic has reverberated through their respective areas of public health and what may lie ahead.
6 INSIGHT SPRING 2020
How has the State Hygienic Laboratory coped with the surge of testing for COVID-19 along with its usual load of newborn screening, environmental testing, and other communicable disease testing? I’ve worked in clinical microbiology and public health for more than 40 years, and this is the most challenging moment in my career. It may not be the biggest public health threat faced by Iowa’s State Hygienic Laboratory (SHL), which began in 1904 and weathered the 1918 pandemic and assorted other outbreaks over the decades, but it’s close. In public health, we meet whatever problems nature presents us with, and I’m privileged to work with a tremendously talented, professional, collegial, and committed team of colleagues. Since mid-February SHL staff has worked, quite literally, nonstop to manage an ever-accelerating inflow of COVID-19 specimens and turn around results to health care providers at a record pace. As of May 6, as Iowa has entered what I believe to be the initial crest of the virus outbreak, SHL had processed more than 30,000 specimens. In addition to getting individual patient tests from clinics across Iowa, we’ve processed thousands of tests from our “strike teams” at meat packing plants and long-term care facilities. As a result, our staff is working nearly 24 hours a day, seven
