Dr. Craig Story, a biology professor at Gordon, has begun work towards to create his own Covid-19 test. During Spring Break 2020, Story went on a mission trip to Florida and felt an ever-growing concern that coronavirus would emerge as a major problem worldwide. Dr. Story brought hand sanitizer and spray for everyone on the trip, but in March, nobody knew that the coronavirus was airborne and that surface contact was of little real concern.
Story said that the technology to do viral detection using DNA, also known as PCR methodology, is very standard and straightforward. “It is not hard to do. We can do it at Gordon College. I had heard about certain hospitals that had set up their own tests. Why wait for the CDC approved test when you could make your own test.”
As the school year started, Dr. Story began work to create a quick testing method for use on Gordon’s campus. “The easiest way to do it is to do it as a pool test which everyone is familiar with now. That pool testing is being done by a company off campus. The pool testing that I decided would be easiest was Pool Testing on Nasal Swabs. So, the swabs collect a dry sample, no chance for things spilling or going through the air. Students would swab their own lower nostrils and then put that into a bag and those would then be combined into one sample and one solution and then put into the PCR test.”
This test was approved by the Gordon Institutional Review Board (IRB). Dr. Story had the capability of testing pools of students with the caveat that this is not the same as an individual medical test that would result in an individual positive or negative. “I think a lot of people are learning a lot about the epidemiology and how testing works. When you get a negative test, it could just be that you got infected that day, but it doesn’t mean you aren’t infected. It just means the level of virus was below the level of detection. So specifically, our pool test strategy that I am working on is looking for the people that are the super spreaders. It will very likely detect those people rather than people with a low amount of virus. It is the high spreader types that infect most people with COVID.” A recent article from the Atlantic discussed the phenomenon of the super spreader. One individual can spread it to 25-30 people. This is how the coronavirus tends to spread so rapidly. “The ability to use a pool is a very good strategy for that type of virus. By using a pool, you are running fewer actual samples which saves a lot of money.”
Dr. Story also mentioned that the daily Wellness Check forms that Gordon students are required to fill out every morning are good reminders to check on how students are feeling. If a student is feeling a little off in the context of a global pandemic, you really should stay in your room that day. Wearing a mask is really important too, he stressed. Dr. Story says it's the best thing we can do right now. It could easily be that you’re in the state of infection where one might spread it around to people; it’s nearly impossible to know. Dr. Story said that we do know that the “dose” that you get of COVID is directly related to how sick you can get. This is why some doctors who had a lot of exposure early on from a heavily infectious person were unable to fight the virus and died.
Do you think it is possible to get COVID again or have a different form of it after you've had it?
Based off the evidence, there might be some individual cases where that has happened, but no one really knows 100% for sure all the details of that. It seems like a rare occurrence. SARS CoV-2 doesn't mutate much. It is genetically stable and there aren’t all kinds of various strains. This is promising in terms of reinfection of the population and also for the vaccine development. However, no one knows for sure how robust the immunity will be that comes from a vaccine.
Have you thought about helping create a vaccine or doing research on it yourself?
In my immunology class next semester, we might do some work as a LAB on bioinformatics on the virus. Basically, looking at which parts of the virus make good candidates for a vaccine. But there are teams of researchers at many institutions working on that so there is very little way that an individual small LAB could help them in what they are doing. What we can do is replicate what they are doing so students can learn how that work is done. You basically look at the amino acids sequence of virus, find the most interesting parts and fancy amino acids and then include those parts in your vaccine.
Do you think you want to continue fine tuning your COVID test or continue using it?
I think when it would be useful would be if we had more COVID on campus. We could test field trip groups, or we could set up a test in Lane and collect people’s swabs if they thought you were exposed, or you were off campus. I have it set up so you could use your phone to enter your name and phone number and the number of the bag that you put your swab in. It would be a self- administered test. So that is another way we could survey the campus and try to find that super spreader early and before they even know they might be sick.