Coronavirus in Oklahoma: Many people handling coronavirus samples were trained in OKC

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Transportation and safety professionals around the world are carefully handling COVID-19 tests and samples with training from an office based in Oklahoma City.

Since 1971, the Transportation Safety Institute has trained nearly a million professionals in aviation, highway, transit, pipeline and hazardous materials safety. The institute is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation and is based in Oklahoma's capital city.

The eight-hour courses cover handling, packaging and transporting of substances like the new coronavirus from testing centers to laboratories.

"Every year, TSI trains more than 25,000 safety professionals in the various modes of transportation," said Troy Jackson, acting director of the Transportation Safety Institute. "In the last five years alone, (the institute) has trained more than 2,000 students on how to transport test materials and infectious substances."

While in class, those students learn how to package those materials safely in approved containers. They must be labeled accurately and shipped appropriately for the level of hazard contained inside, Jackson said.

Pete Kramer is the Multimodal Division Manager for TSI. He said there are two categories of infectious substances when it comes to transportation safety. "Category A" are high-risk substances that are capable of causing permanent disability or life-threatening or fatal disease in otherwise healthy humans or animals.

"Category B" includes everything else, is less restrictive but still fully regulated by federal rules, Kramer said.

The Ebola virus in any form, for example, is placed in Category A. Many other dangerous specimens only fall into that category if they are being transported as a culture, like on a microbial growth plate for research or identification.

Typically, the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is transported based on Category B standards unless it's already being cultured. Other Category B substances are HIV and the coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

Even though it's less restrictive, the coronavirus is still triple-wrapped. The first layer might be a test tube containing a test swab. The next layer is certified to be leak-proof container capable of withstanding a pressure difference of about 14 pounds of force per square inch.

"And the combined, completed package has to be able to pass a four-foot drop test and a leak-proof test," said Kramer.

Category A packaging must be able to survive a 30-foot drop and puncture test.

"When we get into transportation, we put it in this triple packaging and it cuts the risk down a little bit," Kramer said. "Because it may be handled by one person or it could be handled by many, many people throughout its transportation life, until it gets to its final destination."

The people responsible for packaging and transporting these infectious substances must undergo training every three years and pass a test.

"A lot of the customers that I've talked to, they said they're really putting all of the training and everything that we have done for them to use so that they can make sure that they transport the hazardous materials, which in this case is an infectious substance, the coronavirus, as safely as possible," Kramer said.

Those training sessions are still ongoing, although now being conducted in online classrooms.