Aggie veterinary labs provide COVID-19 sampling kits
More than 2,000 COVID-19 sampling kits will soon be on their way to hospitals across the state, thanks to Aggie innovation and ingenuity.
Viral sampling kits—usually used on pigs, cows and chickens—are being repurposed to test humans by the Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory in College Station. The sampling kits are being assembled from lab supplies already in stock at TVMDL’s four labs across the state.
Once assembled, they will be shipped to hospitals in cities with a Texas A&M System campus to help meet the surge in needed test kits including campuses in Galveston, McAllen and the Texas A&M School of Law in Fort Worth. The university presidents will determine where there is the greatest need for the kits in their community.
The kits consist of a swab, a vial with transport media to preserve the sample in the vial, and a bag. The components of the kits are approved by Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for use in sampling humans for the COVID-19 virus. They usually cost about $4 to $5 if you were to order them in bulk before the pandemic swept through the existing stock. Now, these simple supplies are back-ordered for months, crippling efforts to test humans for COVID-19.
