AIF Operations and Coronavirus Response

A message to users and PIs who have accessed or plan to access the NC State Analytical Instrumentation Facility (AIF):

On Wednesday, March 11, NC State made important academic announcements including the extension of spring break and the transition of all NC State classes to online course delivery. This announcement also reinforced that “NC State will remain open and fully operational,” which means that AIF remains open and available to support user research and education activities until further notice.

To our knowledge, no one in the AIF community (staff, users, visitors, etc.) has yet been directly affected by the coronavirus or have come into direct contact with someone with the diagnosis of COVID-19. However, it is important for us to be clear with how we are responding to this evolving coronavirus situation and our expectations of users in an effort to keep all of you – the users, staff, faculty, and other stakeholders – healthy while you work within our spaces.

Our unique environment: As an open-access and shared user facility, our equipment and lab surfaces are touched by multiple users each day, often in small laboratories where users need to work in close proximity to one another and with our staff. Moreover, the AIF is a facility that accelerates access to state-of-the-art resources by important external users (visitors) from other industrial, governmental, and academic institutions who often rely on access to the AIF to accomplish critical research tasks and to run small businesses. In this environment, NC State students, staff, faculty, and visitors must work together to keep shared spaces clean and promote the health and well-being of everyone coming into contact with our instruments, laboratories, and office spaces.

Important restricted access for quarantined individuals: First, and paralleling the NC State requirement for employees and students, the AIF requests that all internal and external users returning from CDC Level 3 areas self-quarantine for 14 days before entering any AIF spaces. As of the time of this email, this includes Europe, South Korea, Iran, and China. Guidelines for how to self-quarantine can be found here. In addition, users who have traveled to the affected areas or who have come into direct contact with someone with the diagnosis of COVID-19 and who have a fever with or without respiratory symptoms, should avoid entering the AIF.

Immediate changes in AIF processes, procedures, and activities:

• Within the AIF laboratories, AIF staff are disinfecting “high touch” surfaces multiple times per day. These include surfaces that users often come into contact with including keyboards, door handles, computers, pens, equipment, lab surfaces, and elevator buttons. In addition to our laboratory doors, the AIF staff are voluntarily disinfecting office door handles and “high touch” surfaces in the 1st- and 3rd-floor MRC bathrooms that are most closely located to the laboratories.
• The AIF staff remain available to support user operations of instruments, service work, and other technical and educational assistance. The AIF is still supporting the training of new users, though the number of users in any individual training session will be kept to a necessary minimum. Large workshops will be postponed.
• Starting immediately, a small number of our technical staff members are minimizing their time spent in shared spaces to protect their personal health and the health of their families. Aligned with recent NC State recommendations on employee social distancing practices, these few staff members remain dedicated to maintaining continuity of services and technical support. For now, they remain in the buildings in which the AIF is located, MRC and EB-1, and are available to support operations or provide advice remotely via telephone or e-mail. Their laboratory spaces are being regularly monitored during the day by other AIF staff. As needed, they are also available to enter the labs on an on-call basis.
• The AIF regularly offers tours of the facility to large and small groups. Tours that are already scheduled are being re-evaluated on a case-by-case basis and will be provided in cases where our staff are comfortable with such activities.

User protective and precautionary measures: The AIF asks that our users take the following precautionary and protective measures, to help keep yourself and others safe while accessing our shared facilities: 

• Stay home if you feel any symptoms of illness, including an undiagnosed cough, runny nose, shortness of breath, or fever.
• Before entering any of our shared spaces, all users should wash your hands immediately before entering with soap and water for at least 20 seconds per hand, and avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth while in our shared spaces.
• At the instruction of the lab managers, use disinfectant wipes on equipment “touch points” before and after use, e.g. keyboards, sample container boxes, etc. Note that the AIF has a finite supply of wipes and they are becoming increasingly difficult to acquire. To facilitate your own personal health, please consider to bring additional disinfectant wipes to use during your experimental time.
• While you are in our shared spaces, please keep your personal belongings (laptops, bags, water bottles, etc.) off of surfaces such as desks and lab benches. Note that any items left behind will be removed from the lab and placed in temporary storage.
• Follow social distancing practices by reducing close contact with others, particularly in AIF’s smallest laboratory spaces. This could include, e.g., to shift data analysis work to computers located outside of the facility, when possible, in order to minimize the time spent in laboratories. To facilitate this, we remind you to take your data with you when you leave the facility.  

This is an evolving situation that requires constant monitoring. Updates on the NC State response to COVID-19 can be found here. If the time comes when AIF has to operate with a reduced staff or has to close the facility for any reason related to COVID-19, an announcement will be emailed to the entire AIF community first, and second, placed on the AIF webpage.

If you have any questions about our response to this situation, including our modified processes or how it affects you personally, do not hesitate to ask. For lab-specific questions, please reach out to the respective Lab Manager. As we balance staffing support across multiple laboratories, don’t hesitate to contact me personally to identify the best contacts for your specific situation (jacobjones@ncsu.edu) or utilize the general aif-contact@ncsu.edu address which is forwarded to multiple staff members including me. In a time when cleanliness and health is prioritized to this degree, I remind our users that we have a safety and ethical reporting web page in which anonymous comments can be submitted: https://www.aif.ncsu.edu/about-us/report-safety-and-ethics-issues/.