Coronavirus (COVID-19) Prevention in HSCRB

The department maintains a list of emergency contacts for each lab. Joe Vaughan will be reaching out to these contacts to ensure the information is up to date. These individuals are responsible for ensuring that everyone in their lab understands what is required of them and for sharing any relevant information with department leadership immediately.

In-Person Events, Meetings, and Interviews

HSCRB has suspended all in-person department-wide events, meetings, and gatherings. Please find ways to accomplish meeting goals by using technology that allows you to interact virtually.

HSCRB is suspending in-person interviews for staff, students, postdocs and faculty until further notice.

The University is regularly updating guidance on on-campus meetings and events.

If you are interacting with other people, please make sure to observe good hygiene and take appropriate safety measures. For example, make sure any food is individually wrapped and meet in spaces with carrying capacities of at least 3 times the number of people present, so that inter-person distances of 6 feet (2 meters) can be maintained.

Students were asked not to return to campus after Spring Recess and to meet academic requirements remotely until further notice. Students who need to remain on campus will also participate in classes remotely and must prepare for severely limited on-campus activities and interactions.

All graduate students have transitioned to remote work.

Our department Chairs are dedicated to supporting our community during this transition and will be working closely with the Administration Team to help and support community members throughout the course of implementing these changes. HSCRB faculty recognize the disruption this is causing in student lives, and will take that into consideration. We are all committed to supporting our students during this unprecedented and stressful situation.

Student Thesis Defense

The transition to remote academic activity includes dissertation defenses, qualifying exams, and general exams. Contact Danielle Oliver for assistance.

DRB Symposium

The 2020 DRB Symposium has been cancelled, and is tentatively rescheduled for Monday, 1 June 2020.

• The Bok Center website offers a series of guiding questions and resources to help with adjusting teaching content, activities, and assessments to an online format.
• The University website on teaching remotely offers additional information.
• The HMS Curriculum Fellows Program offers curriculum-focused support and can answer questions about best practices for online teaching, ways to adapt content or assignments to a remote environment, and other related issues. Contact: cfp@hms.harvard.edu
• Access Zoom Video Conferencing for your FAS Course

Prepare to shut down your operations. This means sustaining only essential operations, including:

• Maintenance of animal strains;
• Sustaining longer-term cultures that cannot be replaced or frozen down;
• Maintenance of liquid nitrogen tanks.

This requires each faculty member to identify the people in their lab who are able to come to work only to take care of these essential activities. These are activities that, if discontinued, would generate significant financial and data loss. See the Research Continuity Framework form

We expect to sustain access to FAS Research Computing resources during this time.

Scholars whose research does not entail laboratory work should work remotely and plan for an extended period of reduced access to campus.

Research group leaders should clearly identify contributions that individuals in their group can make while working remotely.

Contingency plan template

Bill Thompson, Kristen Elwell and Joe Vaughan are happy to assist labs in thinking through specific contingency plans for their research. You may find it helpful to use the following basic contingency plan template to help you better define your lab needs and be prepared for future developments.

Scientific activities in your lab can be categorized into four levels:

• Level 1: Work can be conducted remotely
• Level 2: Work can be delayed or stopped, but requires onsite presence to continue (e.g. non-essential lab experiments)
• Level 3: Long-term experiments and activities that would generate significant financial and data loss if not completed
• Level 4 – Essential activities that must continue (e.g. vivarium, human samples that cannot be recovered, maintenance of liquid nitrogen freezers)

For each level, think through the following considerations:

Support: plan for what you need to maintain these functions (e.g. access to materials, support for critical equipment, cross-training of additional lab members to perform specific tasks).

People: Map people to levels so you are prepared to act if Harvard needs to institute increasing levels of work-from-home guidance. Be clear about who can handle critical activities.

Designate essential personnel: In a state of emergency who, if anyone, on your team would be considered essential to maintaining critical lab functions?

Preliminary interactions with federal funding agencies and other institutions by Harvard’s Office of the Vice Provost for
Research support the expectation that these agencies will be flexible and understanding. We will share further information once it becomes available. See the following links for updated guidance on this issue:

• National Science Foundation
• National Institutes of Health

Hand sanitizer dispensers have been placed in the elevators and common areas. Packaged hand sanitizer has been ordered. When new supplies arrive they will placed in common rooms.

Cleaning and disinfectant supplies are available in all kitchen areas and most conference rooms. If you notice that a room is lacking supplies or running low, please contact Mike Finklea to re-stock.

Hand sanitizer it is not a replacement for washing your hands frequently with soap and water for 20 seconds!

Cleaning supplies for personal use

Please order supplies for personal use separately. Contact Mike Finklea if you have questions or concerns about obtaining hand sanitizer and/or cleaning supplies.

The supplies we have on order are essential for performing the extra cleanings required in our buildings. It is important to have cleaning supplies and hand sanitizers available in HSCRB common areas so that we can keep these high-traffic areas as clean as possible. Please do not remove items from the common areas for your own use.

Animal Care

The Office of Animal Resources, the Office of the Dean of Science, and FAS faculty have rolled out contingency plans to assure continued care of all species housed in the BRI and satellite locations, and to respond to potential effects related to staffing, during this disruption. This page will be updated as more information becomes available.

Please refer to the OAR website and the 11 March 2020 email from Kate Pritchett-Corning, DVM, Director of OAR, relating to COVID-19. During full shutdown, only minimal, mission-critical lab personnel will be permitted to access the facilities. Please refer to the guidance in Pritchett-Corning’s message, which recommends reducing breeding, cryopreserving murine strains where possible, preserving food, and other measures.

Lab Services (media prep, glass wash & autoclave services)

If this is required for the conduct of essential activities, the staff conducting those essential activities must be responsible for it. Only minimal, essential lab personnel will be permitted to access the facilities.

Lab Services personnel can train lab members on how to use essential equipment (e.g. glass wash units, autoclaves) and assist with protocols for media. Both LaTasha Jakes and Joe Vaughan have media protocols if needed.

Histology Services

Histology services have ramped down. Projects were required to be completed by Monday, 16 March 2020. Lab personnel accessing the facilities is limited to those who are required to carry out mission-critical tasks. Look for direct messaging from the Histology Core on this.

Flow Cytometry Services

The HSCRB Flow Cytometry Core has enacted the following changes to its activities in preparation for extended closure.

• Operator-assisted sorting will no longer be supported after close-of-business on Friday 13 March. All sort time booked that day will be supported. Future bookings have been suspended until further notice.
• As of 17 March, the facility will be cleaned and locked through the end of the mandated shutdown period. Future self-service bookings have been suspended until further notice.

We understand these service interruptions will create difficulties for many members of our community, and appreciate your patience and understanding. Please contact Joyce LaVecchio or Amy Wagers with any questions or concerns you may have.

We will contact department members directly via email with information about service restoration once the relevant guidance is available.

Hazardous Waste Disposal, Waste Removal, and Shipping & Receiving

We expect that waste disposal and shipping teams will be available during the shut-down period. We will communicate any changes to these services in follow-up email messages to the community, and will update this page as new information becomes available.

As of 13 March, Custodial Services and lab waste disposal will remain available during normal or reduced university operations. We have implemented more stringent cleaning procedures focusing on common areas, restrooms and frequently touched zones (e.g. door handles, chair arms, stair railings).

If any cleaning or waste-disposal issues arise, please contact Phil Norton.

Servicing Equipment

Vendor services will be interrupted. Once we are able to anticipate the re-initiation of normal laboratory operations, we will address equipment issues and continuity of these services. We will update this page as more information becomes available.

Chemical Waste Pickup

As of 13 March 2020, chemical waste collection and disposal will continue on a reduced schedule during the interruption of university operations. If issues arise, contact Sid Paula or Joe Vaughan.

Cold Storage and Freezers

If issues arise with cold storage units or lab freezers, essential operations staff will be on hand to:

• change LN2 tanks
• handle equipment alarms and failures
• transfer items to another cold storage unit within the department.

There are -20C and -80C backup freezers available for temporary storage. Phil Norton has ordered two chest freezers in case they are needed. To place material in the freezers, or for assistance in the event of an emergency, contact Phil Norton and Joe Vaughan.

Equipment Alarms

Contact the Operations Center, Harvard Energy and Facilities: (617) 495-5560

The Operations Center provides 24/7 alarm monitoring, facility response and emergency call center services to all University buildings. Calls they can service range from routine work requests for HVAC, electrical and plumbing issues to facility-related emergencies such as fires, floods or elevator entrapments.

EMERGENCIES

Any person who becomes aware of an imminent threat to the safety of the community or one of its members, including self-harm, should immediately notify the appropriate police department:

On campus: 617-495-1212 (HUPD)

Off campus: 9-1-1 (local police)

Contact Joe Vaughan at 617-496-0252 for any research- or laboratory-operations-related issue.

We understand this change will raise many questions, and we encourage you to discuss these directly with your manager. HSCRB Chairs, faculty, and administration are committed to finding ways to make this new work environment effective.

Please ensure you have remote access to files and email and access to a laptop set up for VPN access. Please also familiarize yourself with Harvard’s data security policies and procedures.

Please also check that all necessary software you will need to work remotely is up-to-date and appropriately licensed. The HUIT website is a point of reference for these resources.