COVID-19 Communication from ASC

Dear Principal Investigators and Research Teams,

We are following up on the memo sent out by the Office of Research (COVID-19 Update on Research Activity) related to preparing your laboratory to adapt to the impact of disruptions related to COVID-19.

According to the guidance from the Office of Research, research involving critical data collection activities that if terminated would have significant financial or data loss should now be prioritized. All other research activities should be delayed for several weeks.

Consistent with guidance from the Office of Research, the ASC has established the following timelines:

• March 19 by end of business
  • ASC to discontinue accepting new, but to honor existing:
    • Vendor animal orders
    • Imports
    • Exports
    • Transfer requests
  • Labs should:
    • Halt new breeding setups
    • Not start new experiments

• March 20th by 3 pm to ASC Operations
  • Labs to identify
    • Critical animals for line preservation or experiments (cage level or communicate cage card numbers)
    • Non-essential animals that may be culled if warranted

We will continue to provide basic husbandry and veterinary care to the animal colonies per our policies and regulatory requirements.

We are tracking and adapting to the changes as necessary to ensure that our staff is still able to support in vivo animal research at BU. There is a real possibility that our staffing levels could be negatively affected anytime by the COVID-19 spread in MA.

Thank you for your cooperation during this challenging time. Please reach out to us with any questions or comments.

Rao Varada DVM, PhD, DACLAM

Director, Animal Science Center