Labs around the world act to slow spread of coronavirus

As durable goods fly off understocked store shelves, businesses close or limit their services, and schools shutter or switch to remote classes in efforts to slow the spread of coronavirus, scientific facilities around the globe are seeking to keep expensive, long-running experiments going while protecting scientists and the public. “Our priorities are health, integrity of experiments, and facility maintenance,” says Nigel Smith, director of Canada’s SNOLAB, a laboratory that studies dark matter and neutrinos. “In that order.”

With the virus spreading, local, national, and international authorities are modifying recommendations and tightening borders. The measures taken by scientific facilities evolve as they adapt those recommendations to their specific situations. (To learn how US national labs are adapting, see this 18 March story .)

On 17 March the province of Ontario, where SNOLAB is located, was declared to be in a state of emergency. “We are not focusing on science at all costs,” Smith says. “We want to be part of helping make the global community as safe as possible.”

On 7 March CERN had its first confirmed case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The lab suspended all visitor activities and recommended that employees telecommute. Anyone age 65 or older or who has a compromised immune system was barred from the CERN campus except to perform essential duties. Then, this week, CERN transitioned to “stage 3,” the highest-level response of its host countries, France and Switzerland, to a pandemic: Activities on site are now limited to those essential to ensuring the safety and security of the site and equipment. As of this writing, three CERN personnel are known to be infected.

Encouraging—and then requiring—telecommuting has become the norm for now at many major facilities and other workplaces. The recommended size of gatherings has quickly shrunk from a few hundred to a few dozen to twos to none. By the week of 16 March, many labs had suspended user activities and international visits. Numerous facilities have required anyone who had been in a high-risk area to self-quarantine before returning to work. The German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, for example, took that measure in late February; as of 18 March, the lab had one employee who had returned from vacation with a confirmed case of COVID-19.

The European Spallation Source (ESS), which is under construction in Lund, Sweden, is following the lead of its host countries, Sweden and Denmark, and allowing only workers who have remained in those two countries in recent weeks to come on site. “The parking lot is about half full,” says director John Womersley. Meetings are held by videoconference, even when participants are in the same building.

Physical construction continues at the ESS, but many activities are now being carried out remotely. Components from other countries—a cryogenic system from Poland, a drift tube linac from Italy, and a huge pressure vessel from Spain—may arrive late, likely leading to delays in installation and commissioning.

The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, which in December 2018 closed for an upgrade, has suspended work due to the coronavirus, following its host country’s comparatively stringent restrictions. And by 20 March, DESY will be in “Christmas mode": The facilities will be shut down, but the superconducting accelerators of the free-electron lasers, XFEL and FLASH, will be kept at liquid helium temperature, ready for startup. User operations are suspended.

At the European Space Agency, which is headquartered in Paris, more than 90% of employees were working remotely as of 18 March, according to director Jan Wörner. Critical tasks at the agency include maintaining control of satellites and the International Space Station. Slowing the spread of the virus is a high priority, Wörner says, even if missions are delayed. And even as the agency reduces activities, he says, it is implementing special payment plans and other measures “to help industry overcome the difficult times.”

All of Italy is affected by the countrywide lockdown, but Gran Sasso National Laboratory is in an area—Abruzzo, about 120 km east of Rome—that is relatively untouched by the virus, and its experiments are still running. “We applied in the most extensive way smart working from home,” says director Stefano Ragazzi. Only about 6 people are on duty at the lab’s underground site, compared with the usual 40 or 50, he adds.

For the lab’s XENON dark matter search experiment, which is undergoing an upgrade, Ragazzi says, “we asked them to come to a safe stopping point and to pause operations.” The upgrade will be delayed, but other experiments at the lab continue. Data analysis, engineering design, writing papers, and the like can all be done remotely.

The Diamond Light Source, the UK’s user facility in Oxfordshire, has suspended user operations until at least 28 April, with one exception: work that is directly related to coronavirus. Diamond, along with a handful of labs worldwide, has put out a call for proposals to study the virus in an effort to understand it and speed the development of an effective vaccine or treatment.

At KEK, Japan’s high-energy particle physics lab, work continues as usual, says a staff member. As at other places, more people are telecommuting, and trips abroad and to academic conferences are restricted. The first case of COVID-19 in the host Ibaraki prefecture was confirmed on 18 March. “If someone from the lab gets it, we will close,” says the KEK employee.

Spokespeople from the labs contacted by Physics Today report solidarity among their employees and scientists. Says SNOLAB’s Smith, “This crisis demonstrates how much you can do from home. We are pushing the limits of what we can do remotely.”

Ragazzi agrees. “I am convinced there will be positive long-term consequences,” he says. “People will commute less—maybe they start working from home three days a week. This could help limit traffic and pollution.”