And we are at the top of the hour. So a warm welcome to all of you. I am going to pass it on over to my colleague Kendra Morgan, who is going to get us started. Welcome, Kendra. >> Thanks, J.P. And welcome to everyone that has joined us today. We really appreciate all of you taking some time out of your day to be part of this webinar. We hope that you are part of it in terms of sharing your resources and experiences since this pandemic started in each of your institutions. And we know that the large number of attendees that have dwarthed today are really re-- gathered today are really reflective of both the interest and the topic and the concerns and realities that many of you are facing in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. This is the first in what we expect will be a series of webinars for the project, helping to explore the project activities and share them with the field. I'll note that everything we are going to be sharing today and talking about is available on the project website. And we continue to keep that updated as new information becomes available. We have folks joining us today, both in WebEx and on YouTube, and we'll be collecting questions that come through, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in just a minute. So, we have a panel of presenters today representing the three organizations that are responsible for delivering this project to the libraries' ararchives, and museums communities. My colleague Sharon Streams from OCLC, Marvin Carr and Institute of Museum and Library Services, Will Richter and Tom Mera are joining us from Battelle. We're going to talk about our respective roles on the project including a deeper dive into the science and research being conducted by Battelle. We'll also touch on the activities that are coming up for the project. So, as Jennifer was mentioning during the welcome, we really do want to hear from you, and we encourage you to use the chat, whether you're on WebEx or YouTube, and we'll be pausing in a few places to ask questions of our presenters. So, please add those to chat, and we'll do our best to get to all of them during the time that we have allotted today. As Jennifer was mentioning during the welcome, we do encourage you to use that to share your experiences and resources, but the chat can also be overwhelming, particularly with so many people participating today. So, don't worry if you can't keep up in the chat or if it becomes distracting. It's rather hard to read along and listen to the content. So, we will be archiving everything that is shared in the chat. You'll be able to go back and read through the resources that are shared, the links that are provided, the comments that come through. So, use those resources to share your thoughts. And we're also going to be using a tool called poll everywhere to get some realtime feedback from all of our participants. One thing to note is that there is a limit of 700 responses for each of the polls, and we have well over 700 people participating. So, it's possible that you'll see a note that the poll is full, which is OK. We're just trying to grab a snapshot to help inform thinking and the discussion. But the link will get posted to chat, and it's PollEv.com/oclc. And you can open that up in another browser window and you'll be able to respond to the poll as questions come up. And we wanted to start with a quick poll. To better understand where people are joining us today. And I see you are already actively filling out that map. And we have folks scattered across the United States, up into Canada. I see some folks in India and Hawaii. So, welcome to all of you. And we appreciate just how important this is that, as our respective communities have an opportunity to come together and share our best practices, we really do look forward to hearing from all of you and getting an opportunity to benefit from your experiences and expertise from wherever you are joining us from today. So, just a quick overview of project REALM. Back in April, OCLC, IMLS and Battelle formed a partnership to conduct research on how long the COVID-19 virus survives on materials that are prevalent in libraries, archives and museums. This project will draw upon the research to produce authoritative science-based information on how or if materials can be handled to mitigate exposure to staff and visitors. This is something we know is of critical importance to many of you as you look at trying to reopen your facilities, both to your staff and to the public, and so we are going through the process as quickly as we can and we're going to have an opportunity today to hear more about the science, which I know many of you are interested in. We've seen lots of questions come through in our -- we have a project question submission form, and we've seen lots of questions about the science, so we're excited to be able to share a little bit more with you about how it's being conducted and what you can expect going forward. So, I'd like to move on to welcoming Marvin Carr who is joining us from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to talk a little bit about how IMLS is approaching this project and why it's a priority for their agency. Welcome, Marvin. >> Good afternoon. So, thanks again for introducing me. Just quick background. IMLS posted a great webinar with the CDC at the very start of the pandemic. And we heard back from the museum and library and archives field is there's a need for much more museum archive specific data and information about how they can and should deal with the pandemic. And so we convened this group of really great leaders in the space who all suggested that a study on materials and the way that COVID works -- works on material should be studied. And so that was the genesis of this project. And so we convened a project steering committee, a project science working group, and a project operations working group that really helped to define this project and what it should be. And so, I see that we have folks from all over the world on the project -- on the call today. But you should know I am the last of the primary funding before museums libraries and archives across America. Next slide. And so the steering committee is comprised of leaders from across the archive, library, museum and scientific fields. They meet regularly. At this point we're meeting biweekly and they're going to be pleating through the -- meeting through the research study -- duration of the research study. They're a working group that are learning about the operations of the organization and also a scientific working group that are some of the foremost scientists and leaders across the United States that are informing this work. And so, they're bringing perspectives, needs and interpretations from all sorts of universities, from some -- from small and large libraries and museums which has been a great experience pulling in all this great information, all this great guidance, all this great knowledge from all across the field. >> Yeah. And thank you, Marvin. It's been brate to work with you and -- great to work with you and with Scott on this project. And we really appreciate the leadership that IMLS is showing that make sure this research gets to the field. So thank you. I'm going to move to the our colleagues at Battelle, ander, joined by -- we're joined by Tom Mera and Will Richter and they're going to talk about the work that Battelle does and we're going to get to hear more in-depth from them about the science. Welcome, Tom and Will. >> Thank you. So, this is Will Richter. I am a principle research scientist at Battelle with over 18 years of experience working in a high containment BSL-3 laboratory specializing in decontamination. Over the past couple decades, our team has been developing tools and techniques for the Department of Defense, the United States environmental protection agency, and others related to the persistence and decontamination of typically biological warfare type agents such as Anthrax, plague, avian influenza and now the SARS-CoV-2 which is a causative agent of the COVID-19 disease. For those of you that have never heard of Battelle, we are the largest nonprofit research institute in the country, and we are headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. We have many research focus areas including public health consumer, industrial, medical energy and national security. Within the national security division, we have a robust biodefense and emerging infectious disease program where we maintain the largest privately owned biosafety level 3 in the country. Since the inception of the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of this year, Battelle has been heavily engaged with several industries to help address issues related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. First, we have developed and fielded the critical care decontamination system, which I a Lauers for safe and -- allows for safe N95 masks, help keep our frontline health-care care workers safe. We've also developed COVID-19 testing and set up a state certified laboratory to increase both the number of tests within Ohio and the more broadly in the United States. We're also developing and have developed laboratory models to aid in the evaluation of vaccines and therapeutics as products become available for testing and ultimately licensure with the FDA. And in our biodecon labs we've been testing technologies as well as the viral persistence of SARS sard for various agencies including OCLC to support the ongoing national response to COVID-19. >> Great. Thanks, Will. And I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Sharon Streams to talk a little bit about the role that OCLC has on this project. >> Thanks, Kendra. So, IMLS is an important part of this project and Battelle is bringing their scientific expertise. And OCLC's role is to be the connector to execute and manage all of the project deliverables and create the communication structure between our organizations and the fantastic community of libraries, archives and museums that are all part of this project. So, we are coordinating with Battelle on the testing that they're conducting as well as their scientific literature reviews. We bring input from those project steering committee and the working groups that Marvin mentioned earlier and that valuable input informs decisions about the scope and the focus of the testing and the research. And then we have the results. So, OCLC's publishing and communicating about the research and other information that we pull together to the field both through the WebJunction website as well as through a broad network of organizations and member associations that serve the archives, libraries and museum fields who are doing a tremendous job of help amplifying the research and information coming out of this project. Next slide. So, just very high level, the project activities are to review and summarize relevant authoritative research, and this is combing the publicly available scientific literature that's been published. We did that at the very start of the project. We will continue to do that as the project continues. And we're also doing lots of -- having lots of discussions and gathering input and listening to subject matter experts who are in our field who work in archives, libraries, museums and hoo can bring -- who can bring important real-world context to the COVID-19 research. Of course, a primary project activity is to conduct both -- you know, plan, conduct and report on the laboratory testing of materials. And then we take all of the above and synthesize it into what we just broadly are calling toolkit resources, which is resources that takes the scientific information and connects it to real-world application in libraries, archives and museums. And then use that broad communication network of associations and other organizations to get this information to -- out to the field. So, that's just at the very high level, and then the rest of this webinar today we'll be digging into some of the details. But just a few highlights of what has happened thus far with the project. We have published two sets of testing. One was in June and another one was in July. So, each test concluded research or a study of five materials and each test -- in each test and we will continue to do that so we have -- we will continue with testing with five items per test. We expect to publish the results of test 3 this month. And we just today announced the initiation of test 4. Battelle did do a scientific literature review in May, and that was one of the very first deliverables on the project. And that was just to say what is currently known about how the virus is transmitted, how it survives on materials and how -- if -- measures that it can be mitigated that can be deployed in libraries, archives and/or museums. So that was published in mid June. And knowing how fast that the science is happening in this, Battelle is poised to begin a second literature review this month and we would publish that in September. We constructed this project to occur in three phases, and this is really just -- was a way to try to handle the twistly moving nature of the -- swiftly moving nature of the pandemic as well as the swiftly moving plans to reopen our institutions. So, phase 1 was focused primarily on public libraries knowing that public libraries were particularly on the advanced end of the reopening plans in the U.S. And so we wanted to make sure that we were looking at materials that are heavily circulated, frequently handled, commonly found in libraries, also knowing that a lot of circulated materials had been sitting in people's homes for quite a while during the quarantine. So, we wanted to examine what happens when those recirculated materials are coming back to the library and then being prepared for recirculation. Phase 2 broadens the scope of the research, and that started in June, to look at all library types as well as bringing archives, special collections and many different types of museums into the scope as well. And then we have a planned phase 3, which starts this fall, and this is really set up to quickly adapt to emerging conditions as not knowing what was going to happen over the summer and early fall and be able to stand up new research or new activities that would make the most sense for that time. Our goal for this whole project is to get out information as quickly as possible. So, we conduct testing, and we publish it nearly immediately so that all of you in the community can take this into account as you're making decisions and policies and reconfiguring your services and operations. >> Thank you, Sharon. All right. And I do see some questions coming through in chat. We're going to let a few more come through and get through a little bit of discussion on the literature review, and we'll take a pause then to ask some of these questions. But now I'd like to turn it over to Tom Mera at Battelle to talk a little bit about the literature review that was conducted and what will be happening with the next literature review, which will start next week. Thanks, Tom. >> OK. Great. No, thank you. And thank you for the opportunity to have Battelle work together with OCLC and IMLS, and the opportunity to share our findings with the larger community. So Battelle performed review back in May per the request of OCLC and at that time we had put together just to give you a little background put together a team of social science researchers from a public health group, scientists as well as librarians from Battelle to perform the -- our Systematic Literature Review, where really, like Sharon mentioned, was to gather and Sith sid the -- synthesize I guess the cutting-edge most current research that's out there that's been published. For this presentation with summarizing what we did for this first round, please keep in mind that the cutoff for anything published was mid May of earlier this year, and we understand that there -- additional information is constantly involving with COVID-19 that there are opportunities such as the next round that we're starting this month to incorporate some of that and see what's come out. As far as the lit review, one of the main intents or goals was to identify gaps with the material surface survivability and see how that can inform and direct the lab testing that Battelle would do, which my colleague Will will get into a little bit later. If you'd like to do a deep dive of the full report, as was mentioned earlier, you can find the preliminary and the full literature review on the REALM Project sites. And now jumping into the questions of interest, so these were already touched on earlier, so we have -- if you could go back one slide, we have the three questions of how the virus was spread, how long does it survive on material surfaces as well as some what are prevention decontamination measures that are available? Again, the primary focus was survival on material surfaces for this first phase related to directed towards public libraries. As we went through this, what we really saw were these questions for the most part were agnos tick to the location of the institute and that the findings really were broadly applicable to operations across institutes and phases that were mentioned in the previous slide from Sharon. So next, getting into what was the state of the COVID-19 research at the time of performing this literature review? So, again, looking around mid May, the science was constantly evolving. We were in the thick of things. Our understanding as a result of guidance that's been brought out has also been changing. That's how science works. I think one of the biggest challenges has been that despite our understanding of past viruses and what's happened this year, there's still several key unknowns, one of which is that the human infectious dose is still unknown. And that's likely still the case now. So, in general, at that time, things were still very early. Preliminary findings. Most of the information that was found was more on the what are the influential factors, correlations, less of deep dives into characterizing these factors, you know, fewer publications per topic. As I mentioned, a lot has changed since then, but when we first started this, especially with peer review publications, which was a focus for us, the number of peer-review publications were limited. So we had to rely on letters to the editor, in press, those types of materials. And then lastly, as it was mentioned, we'll be cog another round of -- doing another round of literature review coming this month. All right. So to give you a little bit of insight into our process for performing literature review, here's an overview or cliff notes of our process. So starting off with the search term development was really taking a combination of terms like SARS-CoV-2 and keywords from the research questions, working together with our library group at Battelle to narrow down and refine some of these terms, performing some ad hoc searches to see what we get out of this to help improve the quality of the hits. And the next three lines are really our abstraction process where we picked four key databases, scopest, web of science, med line for doing this exercise and that was -- those were selected in collaboration again with our in-house library group of what we felt would give us the best quality data and also cover the largest span of sources. That initially gave us a hit of about 500 different publications and articles. And from that point, we did some relevancy reviews to help categorize and assess what we found. Again, as I mentioned, we prioritized peer-reviewed articles. The biggest challenge there, though, is the turnaround time for some of these peer-reviewed articles to get through the review process and, as Sharon and Kendra mentioned, the urgency of getting information out quickly made it a bit of a challenge to rely solely on peer-reviewed publications. Next, we went through a quality check of taking a random subset of our findings, just to make sure that they were appropriate for the questions that we were trying to address. Once we went through that process, we wrapped things up in a report. That brought us down to about 50 articles that we synthesized removing duplicates. There were other meta-Neal cease that we found that were doing something pretty similar, so when we condensed that down and prioritized our -- or on empirical studies, so data-driven studies, that's what we ended up with. All right. So jumping into some of our findings, so the next few slides are organized by the research questions. So, in terms of how does the virus spread, in general, you have two forms of transmission. And I'll refer to those as direct and indirect. Direct meaning you have person-to-person sneezing as you can see in the upper right there, that the person speaks, sneezes, coughs on someone else, and that's how it's transferred. Within that, you can have large particles where they get suspended in the air for a short period of time and, due to their larger size, they fall to the ground. You may also see references to aerosol transmission, and what that refers to is smaller particles, and because they're smaller, they're more likely to remain suspended in the air. Still less understood with SARS 2 on the aerosol side of things. The study findings that we came up across, especially groups taking -- analyzing air samples, a lot of it was inconsistent. So, for the most part, we focused on the larger particle of direct transmission side of things. The second method is indirect transmission, where you have transmission from a person to an object back to a person. So, this is where all the public library and museum, archives, all those supplies or touchpoints where -- you know, computer screens, things like that, come into question. And that part of our research for the lit review, again, helped guide some of the lab testing that was done for measuring the survivability of the virus on different surfaces. Another major point here that is -- maybe a little more challenging is at that time the potential of asymptomatic carries that even if -- even though you're not showing signs of being sick, you're still potentially contagious. So there were already mentions of that early on. Some other bullets just to ever can here, environmental factors that could affect the spread of the virus. It's been pretty well established the higher the temperature that does lower the survivability and the spread. At the time of this lit review, little bit more inconclusive about humidity, so that would require some additional testing and understanding. Airflow ventilation can improve the situation. Air-conditioning, while it may potentially help spread the virus through the air, just reinforces the importance of having good filters to trap some of that. Then lastly, bathrooms, as with most germs, was found to be a very high contagious -- or contamination area. All right. So, the next -- leading up to the next question, so survival on different surfaces, which, again, was the main -- one of the main goals for this collaborative effort with OCLC and IMLS, looking at the indirect transmission method as mentioned before, literature showed that there were differences in the survivability of the virus based on the material surface or composition, how rough it was, how porous it was. Before dying off, we refer to that as the virus Antoniouateing or -- attenduating or dying off. In general, the literature showed that with plastics and stainless steel that the survivability was longer than paper products and other metals such -- more unique metals such as copper. The challenge, though, was that with the findings across just the handful of studies was, for example, with plastic and stainless steel, there was a rancht of -- range of times where the virus wasn't considered viable anymore, anywhere from 1 to 2 days all the way to 7 days. And this just reaffirmed Battelle performing this testing on their own to have an established, consistent process for comparing different variables such as different types of materials to draw conclusions from those. Some of the challenges with these studies were confounding factors such as large range of starting concentrations, the method of how the virus was delivered, that you're putting it in either synthetic saliva or other methods, as well as studies having different definitions of, I guess -- of a virus not being considered viable anymore. So, again, just being consistent in your experimental design was -- is really important to be able to make conclusions across your design testing space. And then lastly, looking at prevention and decontamination, the top half of this section, I would say, a lot of this was expected. For the most part, these types of prevention, decontamination procedures, methods, are pretty well known, have been provided, presented for other coronavirus, you know, cleaning surfaces. We have our EPA-approved lists, washing hands the right way, creating physical barriers unfortunate to prevent the virus from spreading. Some of the other very preliminary findings that were shown in these -- in other studies were related to heat treatment. So, again, higher temperature leads to greater decay. There was some mention of sunlight, that that could have an impact. Again, they showed a correlation but said that additional investigation was really needed. Lastly, the -- previously we had mentioned airflow and ventilation, open spaces with -- creating separation to make it more challenging for the virus to spread were some of the key takeaways in our literature review. So, I believe that that -- that summarizes the findings that we have for the first round of literature review. >> Yes. Thank you, Tom. So, one person did ask a question, and I can actually answer it, around how are we handling the fact that new information, new articles and information and research is becoming available and what we so is that the project steering committee, the working groups, the project staff are all actively sharing and discussing articles that are being released and putting that into our thinking, and then there's a likelihood a lot of that would be caught as we do the second phase of the literature review that starts next month. So, we are keeping that in mind that there is a very rapid pace of information being released. So, we are -- we are interested in those results as well and trying to keep on top of that and using that to inform our decision-making. So, the next thing that we want to do is just a quick poll. So, we are curious about what things look like in your facilities and, again, we've got about 700 potential responses that we can collect. So, you may receive a sign letting you know that the poll is full. But we thought this would just be a good snapshot of what's happening in organizations and certainly with those of you who are participating today. So, we're asking if your facilities are not open at all, both closed to public and staff, open to public but some or all staff are on site, which seems to be the most common response right now, and then facilities are partially open, coming in second, and then facilities that are fully open to visitors and patrons. And we know that this is a really big range, and what we're seeing, certainly, and what many of you have probably noticed in the comments that are coming through and the questions that there is a lot of interest in a lot of different aspects of the operations in our respective organizations. And there is no one size fits all answer. We are trying to be as broad as possible in the testing that we do to try and help inform your local decision-making. We are not making specific recommendations. Instead, we're providing information based on the science to help you do that locally in conjunction with the information that you get from your local and state health departments, from your own organizations, to help inform how to move through this phase of the pandemic. So, we're going to move over to hear from another Battelle colleague, Will Richter, who is the principle scientist. And he's going to talk a little bit about the testing that's happening, and this is some deep sciencey stuff. We've asked Will to try and put on his layperson hat so that we can all relate to the content, and we'll dig into some of those details when we get to the questions. I've seen lots of things coming through so far about what we plan to test and a few specific questions about level of detection, level of quantification, and we're going to dig in a little bit on this next section. So, welcome, Will. >> Thanks, Kendra. I'll try to make it not feel so much like science class. So, I do appreciate the time I have with you today to give you an overview of the laboratory testing that we've been conducting in our BSL-3 laboratories, help fill in those knowledge gaps that Tom talked about that we identified during the literature review. So, first, since this panel was creating a broad rollout of facilities that you all work at, we felt that a simple approach was desirable if not required, so instead of a more sophisticated decontamination approach, which do exist, the objective of this research was to determine the effects of ambient environmental conditions so 72 degrees Fahrenheit and 40% relative humidity against the vir lent SARS-CoV-2 virus when applied to common library, archive or museum-related materials. We then provide the findings from that research to OCLC, IMLS to aid the community in determining potential quarantine durations for the contaminated materials to mitigate that risk of spreading the disease. So, our experimental design consists of five rounds of testing, each with five different materials and up to five different time points for each of those materials. In an effort to keep and make the testing as realistic as possible, we did select materials that had been previously circulated through the community. So, these are actually used materials, and they were tested without any type of precleaning step applied to them. We also added the live virus to a simulated saliva or fake spit mixture to best replicate that real-world contamination scenario. We have also evaluated some materials in a stacked configuration where it makes sense to best replicate how these materials are stored in the library and various locations. So, once the virus was allowed to dry on the surfaces after inoculation, we performed a quantitative cell base assay to measure the amount of still infectious viral particles at selected time points to determine how quickly the virus attenduated or Ann activated on those materials over time. Solt, moving to the actual tests themselves, I'll step you through the process. It seems complicated but it's fairly straightforward. First we select the materials, for example, a book cover and we cut it into smaller test coupons that measure three-quarters of an inch by three inches. For each material and time point, we include five replicate materials to control for variability. Next, the SARS-CoV-2 is mixed into the synthetic saliva, add a known amount and applied to each coupon as ten small liquid droplets. Each coupon receives approximately 1x10 to the 5 or 100,000 virus part karmts. Thinker allowed to drive for one hour in the laboratory and at the end of that drying time, we collect a times earo set of examples to determine how much virus was lost during that initial drying phase. The remainder of the test coupons are then placed into a chamber that controlled temperature and relative humidity. And at preselected time points, the coupons are collected from the test chamber and processed to determine how much infectious virus remains on the surface. So, to do that, we run that TCI 50 assay as I mentioned before. We do a liquid extraction, and we take a percentage of that liquid that we extract off of the surface and we apply it to a one-layer thick Matte of the kidney cells and if the virus is still viable or infectious, it will infect those kidney cells, and we allow that infection to occur over several days. The samples are then microscopically evaluated for what we call a cytopanelic effect or infection. And the delusion at which 50% of the cell in that deletion are are entered into a calculation to get the final calculation of the remaining virus. So, we're interested in the low end of things. So we put 100,000 on, and at some point, we hit what we determine is the limit of quantititation. For this assay, it's both determined to be 13.1 virus particles. And above this value we're able to again plug in the CPE from the assay, the delusion, and it gives us a quantitative value. Once we reach 13.1 or below 13.1, we can no longer plug into the calculation to get a reliable number. So, below 13.1, below the limit of quantitation, we can still determine if there's infectious, viable virus particles in the solution, but we can only assign a plus or a minus. So it's a qualitative assessment at that point. Until the point we achieve all negative values for the sample at which we consider it below limit of detection. >> All right. >> So moving into the next slide, these are the results from test 1, which you may have already seen published on the OCLC REALM website. Test 1 evaluated four non-stacked materials, which were hard-back book cover, paperback book cover, plastic protective cover, DVD case, and one stacked material, which was the plain paper pages. So, these plain paper pages or this material was inserted back into the book from which it was cut after the inoculation and drying phase was complete. You can see that over 100,000 virus particles were consistently applied to each of the test materials, and that after the initial one-hour drying, the recovery varied based on material type. After one day of material, all materials were below the limit of quantititation indicated by the red line, and by day 3, all the materials were below the limit of detection. So, the other thing that I want to point out is that the plain paper pages represented by the dark blue line was the only stacked material again for this test, and it exhibited a slightly different decay profile compared to the rest of the materials. It has a slightly faster initial decay followed by a slightly slower decare after that which will become important as we move to test 2. So, test 2 evaluated all cell lus based materials. For each we tested each of these in a stacked configuration again to mimic the real-world conditions. The items were children's board book, archival folder, Braille pages, glossy pages, and magazine pages. Test 2 again started out with over 100,000 virus particles on each test material, and after one hour of drying resulted in recovery ranging from 1,000 down to approximately 13 viral particles. This initial rapid decay provial was then followed again by a slower decay over the next four days. So, remembering from test 1 the plain paper pages, which were also tested in a stacked configuration, observed a similar decay profile, which possibly suggests that stacking items together may result in slower attenuation rates. So, back to this test, though, by day 4, all materials had naturally attenduated past the limit of detection except for magazine page. While the magazine page had been below the limit of detection at day 3, a lingering viral particle re-emerged by day 4 creating a possible detection. While the risk much a single point detection is low, I want to emphasize 3 points before we move into questions. So, one, the infectious dose or how much it takes to make a person sick remains unknown. Virus shedding or how much a sick person can put into their environment remains unknown. And three, contact hazard or how much virus comes off from touching the surface remains unknown. So, because of these three unknown factors, we're not able to definitively state or define what a safe level of attenuation is. We simply present the data to use in risk assessment, again, to try and mitigate the threat of the disease. So, with that, I believe we will entertain some questions. >> We are. We're going to get to some questions. And one of the first questions is that people are really interested in how is it that the magazine -- and I can go back one slide -- why would that reappear on day 4 when it was below LOD on day 3? >> Yeah, so, again, we're testing things as real as possible. So, we're using used materials that have been handled by people, so there's some variability to that. We're also applying a very high level or high amount of viral particles to each surface. So as you get down to the very lower levels of detection, every once in a while, you can have a particle that 7uates itself just right -- situates itself just right where as day 2, I think that was one potential particle that was identified. It was sort of a random reoccurrence. You know, there's -- it remains to be defined whether that constitutes a threat or not. But, again, based on those three unknowns, we can't really define whether that's a threat or not. >> I any that's something -- I think that's something that really is a thread throughout all of this testing is that there are so many unknowns about what the infectious dose is, how likely something is to transfer off a material and then be able to infect someone. We do know that most of the -- the concern right now is around person-to-person transmission and making sure we practice social distancing and use peep, but, obviously -- PPE, but obviously until museums and libraries and archives where there's handling so much teernls, having information about the potential risk is the goal of this project so that people can make those local decisions and we have seen a lot of folks talking about how long they are quarantining materials locally and making decisions based on the information that's been shared really globally in terms of the potential risk of items. A few more questions that have come through, and this is in the test results, but that was around the environmental conditions with which were tested for all of these materials. And Battelle is keeping all of the items between 68 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit and relative humidity conditions between 30 and 50%. And those go into a testing chamber and those temperatures are maintained with the exception of when they pull items out to do the testing. And then they go back in. Another question that has come through was how are we -- the differences in the dates that we're using. So, anyone who had looked at the differences between test 2 and test 1, they weren't the exact same days. And if you want to talk a little bit, Will, about the process for making decisions around which dates to test, we are looking with every test we get to pick four time points, and how we're doing that. So if you could address that. >> Yeah, so, the initial -- and it can be a moving target, again, because in the initial literature review, while some materials were evaluated, these particular materials were not veiluated -- evaluated. So material can have an effect, temperature, relative humidity can have an effect. We initially started with much longer durations starting at six days. However, it quickly became apparent that that was too long. So, we kind of adjusted on the fly, test 1 with shorter durations, you get better resolution in the decay curve. And then as we collect more and more data, we -- we're going to narrow in hopefully on a sweet spot of days that we can have some repeatability and show that we're hitting similar points even though there's variables between all of these tests so far. But also hopefully, again, get to an end point where we're targeting that limit to detection, you know, in the literature review round 2, maybe we'll have a better idea of the infectious dose, and that will kind of put some of those initial data into perspective and allow for maybe a different, more relaxed interpretation. But until we have that data, we really can't go there. >> And that's one of the things that the scientific working group that's helping to advise the project is considering as well, is that, as we have been creating the test sets, we are paying attention to the types of materials that go in there to try and make things somewhat alike. So, in test set 3, for example, those -- that's a plastics round. So, that we put things slightly further date than we did with the paper-based materials, assuming that there would be a little bit more longevity there with those hard, nonporous surfaces. So every test is being considered separately and uniquely based on the types of materials that are going into that test. So, another person asked about the tech nog that you -- technology that you were using to test for the virus. And they assumed it was PCR, but I think that is not correct. >> Yeah, so that's actually a question that I've heard a lot and people ask, are we actually measuring infectious virus particles. The tests that you go get with the nasal swab is a PCR-based test so it looks for genetic material. And that PCR-based test doesn't distinguish between "live or dead," whether or not it's infectious or noninfectious, that it's just there by the presence of a DNA signature. The testing that we are doing is that -- that cell-based assay again. So, you know, it is testing for a recoverable virus particle that can actively get into and infect the cell, because that's the ultimate end point that we're measuring. >> Great. Thank you. And there are a lot of questions about how likely is it that someone -- a droplet from a person could infect somebody and, truly, I wish there was a different answer, but we just don't know. So, we can't say that there's no possibility that this could happen. We know that it is certainly less likely than the person-to-person transmission, but being that these are items that you are all handling so often, we're really focusing on the materials that come through our buildings that are staff and our public are handling. But unfortunately, we can't get to the issue of how likely is it that things can be translated. We do want to hear a little bit more clarification on the level of quantification, and I'll go back to that slide just so that people -- we can talk about it. So, when you say 13.1, is that actually 13 virus cells dropping from over 100,000 that were applied? >> Correct. And with the caveat that it's -- we're measuring things in TCID 50 units. So with biological particles, there can always be the possibility that two virus particles are somehow stuck together and could essentially be measured or act as one particle. So that's why we distinguish 13.1 TCID 50 unit. But, yes, it's dropping from that initial inoculum of 100,000 down to 13.1. And within that range, the assay can measure and tell us the number of particles or TCI 50 units that remain. But once we drop below that, it turns into a qualitative evaluation. We assign a plus or a minus. The plus receives an arbitrary value of 10, where Yaz the minus receives a zero essentially. So that allows us to still calculate a value because we -- again, we have five replicates within each test material at each time point. So that's why when we're below that red line, there can still sometimes be a measurable difference, but it's a qualitative measurable difference, not a quantitative one. >> So, a few more questions. You can talk about the strain of virus that you're using and if it's the same one for all of the tests? >> Yeah. It is the same for all of the tests. I -- it's listed in the report, but it's a strain that was isolated early on in the pandemic out of Washington State. Obviously, the virus appears to be mutating as it goes along, which hopefully at some point it will mutate itself out of existence. But we are using the same strain for all of the testing. >> Great. Thank you. Another question came through about whether or not there are plans to test library materials that have actually circulated. And actually, all of the materials that have come in to Battelle for testing came from the Columbus Metropolitan library in Ohio. So they were part of the circulating collection. They had been used by patrons, and they were not disinfected prior to testing to make sure that it mimicked what -- the circumstances that at lot of materials that circulate or that get handled in buildings -- they wanted to keep it as real-life as possible knowing that there are a lot of hands that touch things, so they wanted to keep it to mimic those real-life situations. Let's see. I did see a lot of questions about what else is being tested, and I thought it might be helpful at the end -- I will go through when we get to the end things that have been addressed or at least are on the list of potential items, so for those of you who are putting those in there, I will do a quick runthrough just so you know that we are looking at a variety of organizations or materials rather. All right. Let me just check our list one more time here. And then I might take a pause and then transfer over to having Sharon talk for a bit and then we'll come back and do some additional questions. Actually, one question that I'll ask now because I know it is of interest is what do you understand at this point about the impact of heat on the virus? We know some libraries are in -- and museums and archives in the southwest where they may be a hotter temperature as we're dealing with summer temperatures throughout the country. You can talk a little bit about some of the impact of heat on coronavirus? >> Yeah, we -- so for all of the testing today, it's been at one defined temperature and relative humidity. Going back to Tom's comment, though, I think it's generally understood that the warmer you get and the more humid you get, the faster the attenuation rate is. So that's something that could be valuated in the future, and hopefully, there was some initial research done in the lit review, but it was somewhat inconclusive in terms of relative humidity, but hopefully we'll be able to pull out a little bit more to, hopefully, inform the next phase of testing. >> And someone asked a question about -- I'll go back a little bit -- about the materials that were used for the tests and I think there may have been a little bit of misunderstanding. But the materials that came in, did you check those prior to testing to make sure that there was no coronavirus present on those items before testing began? >> Right. So, for each set of tests per material per time point, there's also a blank associated with that. That's important for two factors, one tier point to be other viral particles there that could affect the cells. There could be other coronavirus there that could affect the cells. But, B, because these can be somewhat complex materials, some of the book covers are multilayered fabrics and cardboardboos that are laminated together with different glues and there's the possibility when you do the liquid go traction that you could extract out some chemical that could also affect your cells. So you need to be able to control for that, and that is consistently tested for throughout all of the testing in those negative controls. And we have some method to be able to mitigate cytotoxicity we call it from chemical effects whereby we can actually concentrate or wash essentially the virus after it's recovered through a spin column, which concentrates it down and then we resuspend in additional cell culture media to mitigate those effects. But we have seen no positive cytopathic effect from any of our negative controls. So that is not a earn can. >> Great. Thank you. All right. I'm going to transition and we're going to come back again. We'll get to some more questions. But I want to keep us moving through some of the content and we will have a bit more time at the end. But I'm going to turn it over to Sharon Streams to talk a little bit about the test results in test 1 and 2, and this is just a chart. She's going to walk through and then a little bit more on the tests that are upcoming. >> Thanks, Kendra. So we thought this could be helpful for you to see all of the results from the first two tests all taken together and both how they were tested, so either in the stacked or unstacked configuration, and what the number -- the number of days that it took for the virus to attenuate across those two studies. I also wanted to show this to you because there has been a lot of questions in the chat about what does this mean in terms of quarantine times and what are recommendations about that and how do you speak to your staff who have questions or concerns about quarantine? And just to state that the REALM Project is not producing recommendations. We're providing information. Again, as I said earlier, we are trying to get science -- scientific information out to you as quickly as possible as soon as it emerges. But what happens then is we have these conversations with experts in the field of libraries, archives and museums who are planning day-to-day operations who can contextualize this to say, well, depending on this, how does this fit with the risks and the resources and how shall we proceed? They can have local conversations with their county health departments. It can be in the context of what their states are doing, where they are in their reopening. So it's way too complex to have a single point answer, but we are really giving you the information to have well-informed conversations and make decisions about it. So, here's what -- again, what we have tested thus far. If we move to the next slide, this is just a reminder of what was just tested over the last few weeks at Battelle lab, and this was a round of plastic materials. And unlike the first two tests, which was heavily focused on items that are commonly and frequently circulated through libraries, this is looking at a combination of both items -- other items that are circulated in the libraries as well as storage and packing and shipping materials to contain either the items that you're quarantining or that may be moving from one institution to another that are use -- that also may be touched and used by the public as well. So, we will be releasing the results of this later this month, and one thing that this also speaks to is that we have two types of polyethylene that's being tested, so there's the low-density polyethylene, so that's that plastic bag that's on the slide, and then there's the high density polyethylene, which is that bin, and we know that there's a lot of other materials that are made with a similar LDPE or HDPE, so the results from this may inform your -- may inform -- give you some information about some other equipment that is in your facilities. We also know that these -- some of these materials can be cleaned, just wiped down and reused immediately, that it doesn't have to necessarily mean a quarantine is the -- is the most pragmatic thing to do. So, again, we will be sharing these results later this month. And look forward to that. But then also, just today, we announced test 4, which has -- just began at Battelle labs on Friday, and this is an interesting thing -- and again, this was really as a result of publishing test 1 and 2 and listening to the community response about this, which was really kind of some interesting open-ended questions about, well, in test 1, you tested books in an unstacked configuration, and you got the results of basically a three-day attenuation. And then in test 2, you did materials that were also paper-based but in stacked configuration, and we saw longer attenuation rates. So the big question that came back was, what happens if we rerun some of those tests, one materials in a stacked configuration, will we also see a longer attenuation time or not? So, that seemed like a really important question to answer. So, we have brought back another set of hardcover books with the buckrum cloth, the trade style book and then the books that have that plastic protective cover and also the DVD cases. And those are all -- those were all tested in a stacked configuration, which simulates either on a shelf, you know, stacked vertically on a shelf or horizontally in a back room or in a return bin. So, we expect to release those results in early September and also you can see here that we've selected test dates that go a little bit further out, so they go out to day six. So we hope that we don't get any of those cliffhanger results where we don't see the materials all seeing -- going below the level of detection by day 6. And then the fifth material is expanded polyethylene foam. And this was a high-priority item for the museum sector, so we wanted to make sure to get that in there as well. This the foam that's used in a lot of shipping and storage, so that's part of that. And then we expect that test 5, which we are working on materials, will address a number of the things that I've seen come up in chat. We're looking at hard -- a variety of hard surfaces as well as textiles as being particularly important for the museum field but certainly quite applicable to libraries as well. >> Great. Thank you, Sharon. I want to talk about what's coming up, and Sharon touched on this. The test 4 results will be available later this month and those again -- or test 4 results will be -- test 3 results will be available later this month. Test 4 results will be available in September. I need to update this slide. The phase 2 literature review will be complete in September. So, Battelle will be going back and looking at new questions for the literature review. We'll also be launching a new project website that will compile all the resources for everyone. The URL will still be the same, OCLC/REALM Project. We'll also be releasing shareable resources in a variety of formats that will apply the research. And we're going to continue to learn from archives, libraries and museums during their reopening about how they're going about changes to their operations, how it might help others as they form their plans. And we thought it would be great to just get some quick feedback from all of you about the type of information that might be helpful in the coming months. And you can choose up to two. This poll is going to fill up really quickly, we know. So, you can go ahead and answer up to two items. We are looking at doing all of these things in some form. They're all going to get touched on, but we do want to use your feedback to help inform our planning and the release of information. So, we have the potential to do an online community where you can connect with colleagues, printable material seems to be the most -- the item of most interest. Short videos to explain the science and testing. We know that working with your stakeholders and presenting this information can be a real challenge. So, we encourage you to take the materials that have been publicly released, make those part of your discussions with your board, with your city managers. Everything that this project creates is released under a creative commons license. You are allowed to reuse it and adapt it with attribution and we encourage you to do that. We trying to be as transparent as possible throughout the entire process. And that includes getting test results out quickly. But we also want to take the time to synthesize some of this as we move through the project in the coming year and put out information that will help you have some of those conversations locally. So, definitely looks like the printable materials and a summary of research, so I know many of you will be looking forward to the next round of the literature review that comes out. So, we're going to go back and do another round of questions, and I'll start by talking quickly about the materials that are being tested. So, we're getting -- we're being informed by the project steerlk committee and the two working groups in terms of what comes in to each of the test sets. And we're focusing on -- we have folks representing libraries, museums, archives, all aspects of the work, and so we have a potential testing list, and we go through that and look at it in terms of how common are these items in our organizations? How beneficial will those be? One thing to think about with plastics, for example, is that high-density polyethylene, that HDPE that is used to form heavy containers is also used in a lot of keyboards for soft -- for computers. It shows up in a lot of different places. So, taking the results and kind of extrapolating them to other items that we find in museums, in libraries, in archives, and how that might relate to our operations. So, one of the questions was about microfilm spools and film. Those spools are likely a type of plastic that we may have already tested. So you might want to check into that and find out what type of plastic it is based on. We are also -- microfilm is on the list. Leather, parchment and geltin-size papers are all on the list for potential consideration. Leather, I saw coming up quite a few times in the chat of interest. On the list. And zippered bags, so sometimes those are made out of canvas or nylon. Those are both on the list. Wood, finished, sometimes varnished, painted, on the list. Plastic, so loanable technologies, 3D printers, virtual reality headsets, phone chargers, calculators, a lot of those things will be impacted by the plastics round. Of course, the challenge is understanding what the materials that you have are made of. And if you think about how many different components these things can have, it can be a real challenge. And just the uBic wit of -- uBic Witt and 52riety that we see in our organizations against the different types of teerlts, we what a lot of questions about what would be happening with museum exhibits. So, the Plexiglas partition was something that our museum colleagues were really interested in, and so that's been tested in the plastics roundtics round because it comprises so many of the exhibit displays that are in museums that people will be touching and then the polyethylene -- expanded polyethylene foam was something that was requested about the museums field, and so that will be part of test 4. DVDs and CDs were tested in test 3. And I see another question about calculators and laptops to students. So I would check on the types of -- what those materials are comprised of. And the good thing about some of those components is that they can tolerate being disinfected. So you could wipe them down to get them back in circumstanceslation more quickly -- circulation more quickly which is not realistic for a lot of our paper-based materials. We know that that's likely to benefit from natural attenuation, letting the item sit until the virus is undetectable. But if you have plastics-based or glass items, metal, you can consider disinfecting those as a way to get them back into circulation quickly. Leah monger wins asking about skeleton and other anatomical models. These circulate on reserves with health sciences and anatomy, physiology students. I'm pretty sure that one might not be on the list. So I will add that as another potential item. And I imagine that those, in some cases, are actually human bones as well as plastics materials that are sometimes used as replicates. All right. So I wanted to make sure I hit some of those. The vast majority of what was asked in the chat are items that are definitely on the potential testing list. And so, as we move through, it will be good having your feedback on things that are helpful or important to see tested is great. So thank you for putting those into there. -- in there. All right. Let's see. Some questions about art supplies. Those are also on the list. Craft supplies, we know that those come up a lot in mumgs that have takeaway activities for kids who are in the library -- I mean in the museum, rather, same in libraries. And so we want to make sure that some of those items have been included. All right. So another question that came up is around temperature and humidity, with cold and -- would cold and humid temperatures be at a higher risk? Will, I'm not sure if you want to address that. One of the things I wanted to share is we have certainly had the conversation around whether or not we start testing things as a different temperature, at different relative humidity. The one concern that we have at this stage of the testing is that all five items that are part of the test round do need to be tested at the same temperature, same humidity, so all five items get the same treatment. So, we have been focusing on just a standard room temperature at this point, but we do see that there's a tremendous amount of interest. We know it was something that we looked at in the first round of the literature review and expect to see additional research that is available. But, Will, can you talk a little bit if you've seen anything about cold and humidity being an impact? >> Yeah, I mean, conversely, too, increasing the temperature and having reduced attenuation, I mean, if you just think about it, to keep things fresh from a food perspective, we put it in the refrigerator and it makes things last longer. So, a lot of these materials, biological materials, we either refrigerate or freeze to allow them to survive for a long time. So, it is expected that as we approach colder temperatures, it will increase the persistence of the survival of these types of materials. The relative humidity, again, can be somewhat more questionable. It's just at what point does it become significant and we don't have a good sense of that just yet. >> OK. And can you talk a little bit about -- so the placement of the virus on the test coupon getting to T1, which is about an hour to allow for drying, is that attenuation largely a result of the drying and extraction process? And would you normally -- do you normally see that type of drop within an hour in most tests that you run? >> Yeah, so the one to 1 1/2 reduction in the drying process is pretty typical. There's a lot of stress that's applied to the structure when it's drying. That's why typically you'll see sort of a rapid decay during that initial drying phase. Then after it's dry, it's not going to structurally change too much. So the decay rate can slow down a little bit, and that was evidenced in the data that we presented today. >> OK. And then someone asked about the protocol for cleaning items after the testing, but just to note, the coupons that are cut out of the materials basically make the item unusable going forward. We didn't send any of the materials back to the organizations that provided them. So, all of those things were disposed of. Correct? >> Correct. All of the testing was done in our high-containment BSL-3 laboratory. So to get things out of that laboratory, either goes through some sort of autoclave process which would be destructive or hydrogen peroxide type of decontamination. For these types of items, again, we're cutting them up to make small coupons out of them, so trying to salvage them would not be realistic. >> OK. Do you know if anyone else within Battelle is looking at infection rate, like what is required for infection? I know we'll likely do some of this when we look at the literature review, but is infectious dose still on people's minds in terms of the research? >> Yeah, I'm not aware that Battelle is working on that. A large focus that we have is being prepared for testing -- third-party testing of vaccines and therapeutics that come through. So, we -- we'll do that testing under a good laboratory practices or submission to FDA. And I know that the infectious dose and how that affects people's interpretation of the data is important, and I'll just throw out there for a benchmark to compare against, so, to put things in context a little bit, when we talk about the previous version of SARS or Merz -- mers, that happens maybe -- maybe a decade ago. The infectious rates for those I think were on the order of magnitude of 100 to 1,000 particles. And you can compare that to influenza, which is on the order of 10 particles. So generally, the more widespread an infectious something appears to be, without knowing the actual infectious dose, the more widespread and the more community spread that you have, generally the fewer particles it takes to cause that infection. So based on what we've seen, obviously, across the world, my hunch is that the infectious rate is on the lower side of things rather than the higher. >> OK. There are also quite a few questions that came through just in terms of how to quarantine items for folks who are doing that. And I would say there really -- people are leaving them in bookdrops. They're leaving them in bins. They're leaving them in boxes. I think the main thing is they are leaving them. We are looking, of course, as Sharon was mentioning, at the stacked configuration to see what kind of a difference that may make in how long it takes for the virus to naturally attenuate since this -- that is going to be the most common storage of items is to be in a stacked configuration, certainly when they're returned to the library. So, I think the important thing is that you're -- is that you are quarantining them, doesn't necessarily matter how you choose to do that. All right. A few more things on the materials list. Touchscreens are on the list. Pens and pencils and musical instruments are also on the list. So, mm-hmm. I think we're doing pretty good on that list. I'm happy to see that we do -- we have captured most of what you were interested in and the questions that you have that is reassuring. Like I said, lots of people have been looking at the list, but it's good to see that we're on track with your interests. And this -- there's a question about whether or not there have been any documented cases from someone becoming infected from a book or touching a keyboard. And my expectation is that that information is not available, that it would be -- that we really wouldn't be able to trace it back to touching an item. But we don't know that it's not possible. So, it's just a matter of keeping that possibility in mind and being as practical as you can in your policies and procedures. All right. There's also a question about other information about remediation techniques besides time. So UV lighting, electrostatic sprays and their effects on materials. And I think this really does apply to libraries, archives, and museums. Like, nobody wants to be in a situation where they're causing damage to materials that are part of their collections. So, that was part of the first literature review we looked initially to find what had been published and I expect that will be part of the gap analysis with phase 2 as well to see how those things are being used. There certainly have been a lot of conversation about the extreme heat that some bed bug zappers are capable of generating. So that's -- those things have come up and have been captured as place -- as items of interest. All right. Jennifer, is there anything else that we're missing as we head into wrapping up the session? >> Wow. Such great contributions to chat. We really appreciate your questions. Obviously, we will take those that we didn't get to into consideration, and I mentioned in chat that you should definitely be sure you're subscribed to the update list, and we will send you information through there. And a couple reminders, as we wrap up, today I will send you to a short survey as you leave, and we will collect your feedback on today's session via that survey. It will also be in chat here for especially those folks on YouTube so that you can also provide us with that feedback. And I will be updating today's event page once we have the recording and all of your excellent contributions to chat as well as the captions. So you can return to that page. I will send an email to those of you that registered. And it was great having those of you on YouTube join us. We are so excited to be able to provide that option, and we'll continue to if we don't have enough room in our WebEx room. But thank you again. Thank you so much to all of our panelists and to our captioner and everyone have a fantastic day, and carry on. I know that it's really rough out there, and we are definitely working to support you as much as possible. So thank you all. Bye-bye.