IOWA CITY, Iowa — Iowans of all walks of life are stepping up to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
Iowa State University's vet diagnostic lab is using its equipment to help test people for the virus.
Normally, the lab detects infectious diseases in all types of animals.
But now it's helping out the state hygienic lab in Iowa City to increase testing of COVID-19.
"I can tell you, it's created, step wise, an enhancement of the capabilities," dean of the Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Dan Grooms said.
The Iowa State veterinary diagnostic lab is turning its effort to help COVID-19 response in Iowa.
"Our veterinary diagnostic lab is a state-of-the-art diagnostic lab that's set up to do animal testing at large scales. In fact, we do over 1-million tests here on an annual year," Grooms said.
They partnered with the state hygienic lab at the University of Iowa, which houses COVID-19 testing, by sending a bulk of equipment and expertise needed to increase the amount of COVID-19 testing in Iowa.
"By Friday morning we had instruments, people, reagents on its way to Iowa City and worked with their team there that's working around the clock at the hygienic lab over the weekend to on-board our hyput molecular extraction techniques into their work flow, they validated it into their workflow and on-boarded it. as of the testing, they started doing it last Saturday," director of the ISU veterinary diagnostic lab, Rodger Main said.
"This is what Iowans do under dire circumstances. We're looking for every opportunity we can to answer the call to solve this problem in the state of Iowa," Grooms said.
Right now, Iowa has the capacity to test 970 samples of suspected coronavirus cases.