Alva Review-Courier -

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Working with infectious materials is nothing new for Robert DeLong.

"Basically I'm a lab rat,'' said the Kansas State University professor, a researcher in veterinary medicine. Before landing on a college campus, he had worked in the biopharma industry on herpes and HIV vaccines, "so I had a fair amount of exposure," he said.

But he had never imagined working in a lab where the work so immediately impacts the lives of thousands.

DeLong, and his K-State colleague Mark Haub, answered the call from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment lab in Topeka to help test the growing number of samples for COVID-19.

"This is unprecedented," DeLong told The Kansas City Star. "I felt very much called to do something like this. I felt obligated not just professionally, but morally."

He was surprised, though, to find himself working in a lab with "this level of intensity."

Three weeks in, DeLong and Haub say they are humbled by the speed and volume of samples fellow scientists process daily from hospitals and clinics around the state. Hundreds of tests marked positive were found by lab workers in Topeka.

The professors "really helped KDHE out when we needed it," said spokeswoman Kristi Zears.

As pressure mounts for states to begin easing stay-at-home orders to restart their economy, states hope to ramp up testing. But Kansas ranks near the bottom of states and territories when it comes to testing per-person, according to multiple sites that track U.S. testing. Gov. Laura Kelly told The Star the state hasn't received the testing supplies it requested.

The tests the state does administer must undergo a complicated process in the lab, the K-State professors said.

"The bottleneck," DeLong said, "is in getting samples prepped for the PCR or Polymerase Chain Reaction."

The what? The PCR test. It's a machine used to analyze genetic material even in samples containing only minute quantities, like from a nose or cheek swab.

Haub heads up K-State's Department of Food, Nutrition, Dietetics and Health. He's been at the university in Manhattan for 20 years. Now, whenever called, between teaching classes and doing research with graduate students, he's in Topeka helping to process samples.

"I'm happy to be able to help," Haub said. "The people there are in the lab working 24/7. We are just coming in and filling in the gap so they can have some time off to spend with family."

Their work does not come without risk.

"You have to respect the samples you are working with," Haub said. "It could potentially transmit virus. And you have to do everything you can to maintain a safe work environment so that you don't contract the virus."

Samples come packed in plastic foam, cooled by those blue ice packs, and set inside a cardboard box. Couriers deliver them to the lab truck docks. When a doorbell rings inside, scientists go pick up the packages.

DeLong and Haub, donning protective gear — lab coats and gloves — remove the samples from the boxes. Samples — swab sticks — come enclosed in hard-plastic tubes, where they are sitting in four ounces of a solution that keeps the sample active. It's that fluid that ultimately is extracted to test for infectious particles.

From the labels attached to each sample the professors collect vital information, such as where it came from, the age and gender of the patient, and then catalog that data into the state's system. They handle every sample under a scientifically controlled environment, working in what's called a Laminar Flow Hood with a steady micro-filtered air stream.

If you've ever watched a sci-fi movie where scientists are handling some dangerous bio-material that's about to spill and turn everyone into zombies or something, then you've probably seen them with their hands in a flow hood.

Haub said he alone has handled hundreds of samples. "You never know if you are handling a sample positive for COVID-19," he said. When the state's daily report comes out announcing the number of new cases, Haub wonders for a moment, did he handle any of those samples? "I have to work like every sample has the virus in it."

DeLong, who lives in Manhattan, drives to the Topeka lab on the weekends. "I consider this professional service," he said. "The first few days there I had to learn. Then they unleashed us to start handling and processing."

And in the span of weeks they have improved their process. "It's even more high capacity," DeLong said.

Still, DeLong said, he came to the task with concern. "Concern not for myself, but that if I get infected I might infect my family."

Haub, who lives in St. George, nine miles east of Manhattan, said he wouldn't have volunteered for the job "if it was going to jeopardize my responsibility as a husband and father or my K-State responsibilities."

So, to be extra safe, when he gets home, "I pull into the garage and disrobe right there," he said. "My clothes go into the washing machine and I go right into the shower. Everything gets wiped down."

But, he explained, because health care providers are working directly with patients coughing and breathing and sneezing, "they have a much harder job than we do. We have more control managing ourselves around the virus."

"The focus should be on those full-time lab workers and the front-line workers. We are just the helpers."

As for his work at the university, Haub said that because "there has never been anything like this in my lifetime, being in the state lab has helped give me a perspective on what these people do on a day to day basis. One of the classes I teach is public health. This has been very applicable."

As of last week, the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention reported 95 public health laboratories offering COVID-19 diagnostic testing, including one or more public health labs in each of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Until March 13, public health labs were the only ones, outside the CDC, authorized to test for COVID-19.

"While the number of both private and public health laboratories capable of testing is expanding, the country is still facing testing challenges," according to the Association of Public Health Laboratories.