A decade after Ebola, Emory launches lab to study virus transmission on PPE

Ten years after Emory University treated the first patients with the Ebola virus in the U.S., the team behind that critical care is opening a new lab to further study how to prevent the spread of deadly viruses in healthcare settings.

"I’m going to throw on my PAPR, my power air-purifying respirator, and we’ll walk in the room," said Jill Morgan, nurse and site manager for Emory’s Serious Communicable Diseases Unit (SCDU).

She showed the layers of personal protective equipment (PPE) that she and her team had to wear while treating Ebola patients in 2014.

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"Each person has coveralls, gloves, booties, all sorts of things that we put on … it’s a lot of gear," she said.

Morgan then took us to the same room where she cared for patients throughout the fall of that year.

"Our sickest patient was in this room for 40 days," Morgan said.

Emory’s SCDU made the hospital uniquely qualified to treat Ebola patients. The unit was initially established to provide rapid care for CDC workers exposed to deadly illnesses.

Morgan recalls the challenge of balancing compassionate care for Ebola patients while ensuring she didn’t contract the virus herself.

"You have to think about the whole area of your PPE that can be contaminated, and you’re also trying to extend to them the kindness any of us would wish for," Morgan said.

Thankfully, all the patients treated at Emory recovered and were discharged with a clean bill of health — and so did Morgan and her team.

She emphasized that knowing the proper way to put on and remove PPE was essential to staying safe.

"To take it off, you have to do it very precisely in a certain order. With Ebola, it might only take 1 to 10 copies of the virus to make you ill, and so that makes it a very high-stakes game," Morgan explained.

This month, Morgan and her team are launching a new lab at Emory to study how viruses spread on PPE and medical equipment.

The Healthcare Test Kitchen Lab will use bacteriophages — viruses that are harmless to humans — to simulate dangerous pathogens like Ebola.

"If I roll a piece of equipment in, can I safely decontaminate it and let it be used on another person? Well, that’s a high-stakes game. So we want to make sure that we have that right," Morgan said.

The goal is to use the lab’s findings to improve how healthcare workers handle contamination worldwide.

"If I can make a process for cleaning a device safer, that’s safer for every patient in the hospital. That’s safer for every staff member who comes in contact with that piece of equipment," Morgan explained.

Morgan believes these efforts will better prepare hospitals for the next outbreak.

"That’s going to give us a jumpstart on whatever comes next. And while I love to think it would be another hundred years, I think most of us are betting that it won’t be that long before we have another pathogen of some kind," she said.