Biosafety at Home: How to Translate Biomedical Laboratory Safety Precautions for Everyday Use in the Context of COVID-19

Reina Ortiz M, Grijalva MJ, Turell MJ, Waters WF, Carrazco Montalvo A, Mathias D, Sharma V, Fierro Renoy C, Suits P, Thomas SJ, Leon R. (2020). Biosafety at Home: How to Translate Biomedical Laboratory Safety Precautions for Everyday Use in the Context of COVID-19. The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. URL: http://www.ajtmh.org/content/journals/10.4269/ajtmh.20-0677

PERFIL DE LOS AUTORES USFQ:

Andrés Carrazco Montalvo es alumnus USFQ, se graduó de Ingeniero de Procesos Biotecnológicos en la Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ (Colegio de Ciencias Biológicas y Ambientales).

William F. Waters obtuvo su PhD en Sociología del Desarrollo en Cornell University, es profesor e investigador de la Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ (Escuela de Salud Pública, Colegio de Ciencias de la Salud) y co-director del Instituto de Investigación en Salud y Nutrición ISYN-USFQ.

Renato León obtuvo su PhD en Ohio University, es profesor e investigador de la Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ (Colegio de Ciencias Biológicas y Ambientales) y director del Laboratorio de Entomología Médica y Medicina Tropical LEMMT-USFQ.

ABSTRACT

Population adoption of social distancing measures during the COVID-19 pandemic is at times deficient, increasing the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Healthcare workers and those living in areas of intense transmission may benefit from implementing biosafety measures in their daily lives. A mixed-methods approach, combining components of single negotiation text and the Delphi method, was used to create a COVID-19 biosafety-at-home protocol. A consensus building coordinator liaised with 12 experts to develop the protocol over 11 iterations. Experts had more than 200 years of combined experience in epidemiology, virology, infectious disease prevention, and public health. A flyer, created from the final protocol, was professionally designed and initially distributed via social media and institutional websites/emails in Ecuador beginning on May 2, 2020. Since then, it has been distributed in other countries, reaching ∼7,000 people. Translating research laboratory biosafety measures for the home/street environment might be challenging. The biosafety-at-home flyer addresses this challenge in a user-friendly format.