COVID-19 is interrupting lab animal research, sometimes fatally
Lab animals have become casualties of the epidemic as researchers are forced to stay away from their lab benches to slow the spread of the virus. (Pexels/)Scientists around the world are quickly pulling together studies that use animal models like mice, rhesus macaques, and ferrets to study COVID-19. But in other departments, lab animals have become casualties of the epidemic as researchers are forced to stay away from their lab benches to slow the spread of the virus. Some researchers have needed to euthanize their animals while others have had to halt delicate experiments in a way that will likely require the use of another animal when they return.“Every model has different problems,” says one postgraduate researcher at UC Davis. She and other researchers who spoke to Popular Science asked not to be named for fear of reprisal. They say that just like it’s too soon to measure the human...