The Pandemic, Vermont Medicine Magazine, Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont

Debra Leonard, M.D., Ph.D.

Solving Testing Challenges Through Collaboration and Action

Early in Vermont’s stay-at-home order phase, the state faced both a shortage of COVID-19 test materials and limited capacity to process tests. As the only medical school and level one trauma center in Vermont, the Larner College of Medicine and University of Vermont Medical Center, respectively, quickly acted to address these challenges.

Between March and June, Larner scientists produced more than 37,000 vials of solution for use in COVID-19 testing. UVM Vaccine Testing Center research technicians took the lead in collecting transport media—a solution needed for COVID-19 specimen collection— from Larner laboratories. Then members of the UVM Medical Center Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine added swabs and other components and assembled the kits. Deborah Leonard, M.D., Ph.D., chair of pathology and laboratory medicine, and Beth Kirkpatrick, M.D., chair of microbiology and molecular genetics and Vaccine Testing Center director, provided leadership for the initiative.

With limited laboratory personnel to process COVID-19 tests, Vermont turned to the Mayo Clinic Laboratories for help. UVM pathology and laboratory medicine staff were organizing daily transport of tests samples from Boston’s Logan Airport to Rochester, Minn., when they ran into a snag—flights were getting cancelled, which meant test results and important related clinical decisions were delayed. In a demonstration of true community collaboration, members of the medical center, UVM Health Network, Vermont Department of Public Safety, Green Mountain Messenger, JV Air LLC, and Heritage Flight rallied to secure a private jet to make the deliveries, ensuring 24-hour turnaround test results. This arrangement allowed Vermont to send up to 600 tests per day to Mayo, says Leonard, which was two to three times as many tests as Vermont had been previously sending.

An innovative research initiative, run concurrently with the test assembly effort, brought Larner virologists, pathologists, and infectious disease experts together to evaluate potential alternatives to the traditional RNA extraction kit, a key part of the COVID-19 testing process that has been in short supply. They tried two strategies: An alternative RNA extraction kit and an assay that omits an RNA extraction step altogether. Associate Professor of Medicine Jason Botten, Ph.D., Faculty Scientist Emily Bruce, Ph.D., and colleagues published the initial findings as a BioRxiv manuscript preprint. The experimental test has been replicated by labs all over the world with promising results. The team has since published a second preprint, a peer-reviewed article, and launched a collaborative multi-site international trial of the alternative tests.

Web Extra

Read more about Vermont's testing efforts in a Rutland Herald news story.

The MSCAN database includes medical student-led volunteer activities across the U.S.

A COVID-19 Action Network Takes Shape

On March 13, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept through communities large and small, Vinh Le ’23 founded the Medical Student COVID-19 Action Network (MSCAN) to help coordinate medical student-led volunteer efforts. With the help of 23 of his Larner classmates, he developed a list of contacts at every accredited U.S. medical school in the U.S. and began reaching out to them to gather data. The MSCAN database now contains hundreds of volunteer activities from 104+ schools in 40 states. The effort is supported by 57 medical students from the College and over 240 additional contributors.

Web Extra

Visit the MSCAN network database.
Read more about the network's development in a Larner news story.

Gia Eapen ’22

Feeding Healthcare Workers

With clinical clerkships on hold in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gia Eapen ’22 and Sylvia Lane ’22 needed a way to feel useful. The LCOMcares Service Corps, a group of faculty, staff and students formed to help the community through this public health crisis, introduced them to Frontline Foods, a national organization that’s uniting hospitals with area restaurants to feed healthcare workers. Financial donations from the community pay local restaurants to prepare individually packaged meals that are then transported to area hospitals. Eapen and Lane have been in charge of marketing for Frontline Foods’ Vermont chapter, which boasts over 50 restaurants as members.

Web Extra

Visit the Frontline Foods Vermont website.
Visit the Frontline Foods Vermont Instagram feed.

Claudia Russell ’22 (pictured on screen) teaches tai chi to Maria DesRochiers,

Connecting with Elderly Community Members

To help nursing home residents who can’t have visitors during the COVID-19 pandemic stay connected and engaged, Larner College of Medicine students organized a series of virtual activities at Vermont facilities. With leadership from Claudia Russell ’22 and Ashleigh Peterson ’22, and with the guidance of Janet Nunziata, M.S., associate director of the UVM Center on Aging and coordinator of the Queen City Memory Café, students have hosted virtual sing-alongs, tai chi lessons, book readings and more for residents of nursing homes in Burlington, Bristol, Montpelier and other Vermont towns.

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