Medical and student volunteers training to assist with coronavirus testing

Dozens of these volunteers already started assisting MDA personnel this week, with thousands more to join them in the coming days.

By ZACHARY KEYSER
An employee of German biopharmaceutical company CureVac, demonstrates research workflow on a vaccine for the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease at a laboratory in Tuebingen, Germany (photo credit: REUTERS/ANDREAS GEBERT)
An employee of German biopharmaceutical company CureVac, demonstrates research workflow on a vaccine for the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease at a laboratory in Tuebingen, Germany
(photo credit: REUTERS/ANDREAS GEBERT)
A joint effort intended to expedite the rate in which diagnostic coronavirus tests are able to be administered to the Israeli public, will be carried out by a collective of local universities, hospitals and the MDA, with the cooperation of the Health Ministry.
Academic institutions such as Tel Aviv University, the Technion, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Bar-Ilan University and Ariel University; medical centers, including Sheba, Shamir, Hadassah, Soroka, Wolfson and Tel-Aviv Sourasky; and a number of Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) have begun training student and medical volunteers to assist in administering coronavirus diagnostic tests to the public, in the hopes that their efforts will help to better combat the spread of the virus throughout the region.
Additionally, the initiative includes a partnership of laboratories around the country where these volunteers will also be able to assist in reading the test samples sent for coronavirus diagnosis, expediting the results to hospitals for suspected patients.
The initiative itself has pooled together over 1,000 medical students, 600 PhD graduate students and laboratory workers among others, to assist personnel stationed in laboratories and hospitals with their coronavirus testing.
"It is inspiring to see the students, from all the higher education institutions in the country, who enlisted bravely and resolutely to establish new laboratories and to assist existing laboratories in their efforts against the coronavirus," said Prof. Carmit Levy of the Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Medicine.
Dozens of these volunteers already started assisting MDA personnel this week, with thousands more to join them in the coming days.