Princeton, NJ March 12, 2020 was a very different place than Princeton, NJ March 12, 2021. On that day one year ago, children attended a full day of school (albeit most cleaned out their lockers upon leaving), most grown-ups worked a full day at the office and hordes of people ran to the supermarket to stock up before we went into mandatory isolation. The governor had just signed an executive order, and many were filled with fear and concern. None of us could have predicted a year later we would still be avoiding crowds, wearing masks and waving hello to others from a distance.

That very same week, on March 17, 2020, Princeton Perspectives posted our first issue. Amidst the panic, we were able to share the current situation with one principal’s reaction to COVID, and every month since, we’ve gone in-depth to cover what matters and provide you with an understanding and appreciation for the happenings, people and places around our town.

This month, in COVID – A Year In. The Local Realities, Princeton Perspectives takes a look at what the situation has really been like for Princeton, and the people and places most affected by the pandemic.

Each one of us has a story, no one is unaffected. To hear what others have gone through, watch the Pulse of Princeton video. You’ll learn from several locals how the past year has changed them.

There has been a lot of information and misinformation about the impact the virus has had in Princeton. Who had been affected the most? Is it our long-term care facilities? Our schools? A Year Later, the Full Picture of COVID in Princeton investigates the situation to bring you an all-encompassing account of how our town has fared and where we stand today.

For some, COVID-19 took loved ones. For others, sickness struck and changed their lives. Four Princeton residents were brave enough to revisit their experiences and share them with you. After a Difficult Year, Reflections from Princeton Pandemic Survivors tells their stories.

Amongst all the sorrow and pain, is the beacon of hope. This unprecedented pandemic brought forth an array of scientific discoveries and creations. In Princeton-area Scientists Help Fight the Pandemic Battle, we demonstrate some of the ways our local science community has heeded the call and is helping us to curb this pandemic.

Also helping in this fight are our Frontline workers. We thank them from the bottom of our hearts for all they have given and given up to protect and provide for our community. But what has it been like for them? Perspective from a Year on Princeton’s Frontline is a first-hand account from one of Princeton’s medical leaders. How did she manage being a doctor, a mother and a Princeton resident this past year? Read on to find out.

Last but not least we bring you Perspectives Revisited, our monthly opportunity to update you on stories from the past. It has been a year since the pandemic arrived, but unfortunately, it has had long-lasting effects.

Still, COVID cases have dropped in Princeton and every day more people get vaccinated. There is a feeling of optimism as the sun starts to shine more and warm weather ushers in. To that end, in April we will bring you Reinventions. Spring is a time for blooming, we’ll share our local realities of what’s blossoming here.

Thank you for going on this year-long journey with us. As always, if you like what you’re reading, please forward to a friend. We aim to tap into what matters to Princeton and that means what matters to you. If you have a topic idea we’re not covering, please email us here.

We look forward to sharing another year of honest journalism with you, and many more!

Lisa Jacknow

Lisa Jacknow spent years working in national and local news in and around New York City before moving to Princeton. Working as both a TV producer and news reporter, Lisa came to this area to focus on the local news of Mercer County at WZBN-TV. In recent years, she got immersed in the Princeton community by serving leadership roles at local schools in addition to volunteering for other local non-profits. In her free time, Lisa loves to spend time with her family, play tennis, sing and play the piano. A graduate of the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, Lisa was raised just north of Boston, Massachusetts but has lived in the tri-state area since college. She is excited to be Editor and head writer for Princeton Perspectives!

We reached out to several Princeton residents to understand what it’s been like for them.

We’d love to include YOUR perspective! If you’d like to contribute a video for next month’s Pulse of Princeton, click here and provide your name and email address to be contacted.

Lisa Jacknow

Lisa Jacknow spent years working in national and local news in and around New York City before moving to Princeton. Working as both a TV producer and news reporter, Lisa came to this area to focus on the local news of Mercer County at WZBN-TV. In recent years, she got immersed in the Princeton community by serving leadership roles at local schools in addition to volunteering for other local non-profits. In her free time, Lisa loves to spend time with her family, play tennis, sing and play the piano. A graduate of the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, Lisa was raised just north of Boston, Massachusetts but has lived in the tri-state area since college. She is excited to be Editor and head writer for Princeton Perspectives!

The best news so far this year is that the number of COVID-19 cases in Princeton have been consistently dropping since December 30, 2020, with a more than 88% decrease to date. Today, there are now 2.45 confirmed cases per 10,000 inhabitants.

To follow the trajectory of the virus in and around Princeton, there are a lot pieces to put together. Every few days, the Mayor of Princeton puts out an email informing us of the latest updates: how many cases we’ve had, what the new re-opening plans are and who is next in line to get a vaccine. Schools inform their communities via email when a new case of COVID is identified and reach out to anyone who may be affected. And extra-curricular activities have made all attempts to continue, some in person and others via Zoom. With few to no social gatherings, no large groups volunteering in-person and many working from home, there are limited opportunities for one community to share its stories with another. So today, one year later, we take a look back to really understand statistically what the overall picture has been in Princeton.

The pandemic did take 20 lives in our town from March-May of last year, and recently, one more person passed from the virus. These deaths largely stemmed from initial outbreaks at long-term care facilities.

“Over 25% of the total population tested positive for COVID-19,”shared Princeton Health Officer Jeff Grosser, referencing initial occurrences of COVID at Princeton Care Center and Brandywine Serenade (formerly Acorn Glen). “87% of the deaths from COVID-19 registered in Princeton were reported from residents of nursing homes.”

At that point, the Princeton Health Department worked to improve communication between facilities and attributes the Governor’s mandates restricting visitation, mandating mask wearing in the facilities and requiring regular COVID testing of patients and staff to further rectifying the situation. Monitoring, contact tracing, surveillance and other vigilance combined to help turn the tide in those communities.

From March 10, 2020 through March 10, 2021, there were 625 confirmed cases of COVID in Princeton. The most recent 14-day total case count is at its lowest number since the 2-week period ending September 9^th. As you can see in the graph above, Princeton has shown lower cumulative counts than our neighboring towns, county and the overall state. In general, it appears that our municipality’s actions from the health department and other government entities to support from residents and local businesses made big an impact. Additionally, our highly educated population, living in better housing conditions and following PPE mandates has led to a better scenario throughout the pandemic. That being said, not all segments of our population have fared as well.

As the graph below indicates, White, Black and Asian segments of our local community have fared proportionate to their populations if not better, whereas the Hispanic or Latino population which makes up 7.7% of Princeton residents contracted 15.3% of all reported cases.

There is a lot of talk nationwide about which age populations are getting COVID-19 more than others. In Princeton, the most affected age group overall has been those residents between ages 18-59 (54%), with the current average age of confirmed cases being 42.9. That is proportionate, as approximately 50% of Princeton’s population falls in that age group. Adults aged 60+ have made up 28% of Princeton’s cases, followed by those under 12 (12%) with children aged 13-17 having the smallest rate of contraction (4%).

“It is important to point out that between the first case ever reported on March 6, 2020 and August 25, 2020 cases reported were among people aged 50-60sh,” shares Grosser. “After August 2020, the mean age of people that contracted the disease dropped considerably.”

Likely due to the return of in-person sports and school. As one of the biggest fears of COVID-19 transmission at that time was the return to school, we saw a changing landscape of schooling throughout our community. All schools adapted their use of classroom and non-classroom space to permit for greater social distancing, while some remained full-time in person, a few schools had extended periods of all-remote learning and others turned to hybrid education.

Princeton Perspectives reached out to 20 area schools and only one school reported on campus COVID transmission this school year (two cases).

“We haven’t had any transmissions within the school building,” shares Princeton Day School’s Head of School, Paul Stellato. “Though there have been some cases, none have taken place in school.”

Mercer County as a whole has had only 4 confirmed outbreaks and 18 linked cases in schools. This victory is thanks in part to the partnership both public and independent schools have asked of their families including limiting travel, quarantining when needed, submitting to daily health screenings and following school safety protocols.

“We’ve been very fortunate, part is good luck and part is intentional safety practices,” notes Melissa Carroll, Princeton Friends Head of School. “We’ve been teaching outside using outdoor spaces. Kids eat lunch and have recesses everyday outdoors. We had full outdoor classes until Thanksgiving, have had some indoor instruction since, and now we’re reemerging. Indoors, we’ve had reduced class sizes, with all doors and windows open.”

Extra tables and bookcases were removed from classrooms, public areas became learning spaces, desks were spaced out and some schools added plexiglass dividers. Referred to as pods, bubbles or cohorts, many schools have children divided into groups that operate separately, which also helps to keep transmission risks minimal.

“Each classroom has a door that opens to the outside, so even when kids arrive, they enter through their classroom door. It helps us keep kids with their pods,” explains Princeton Junior School Director of Admissions and Enrollment, Katie Pottinger.

Independent schools do have some advantages over public schools. They don’t have to follow all of the same state mandates, started with smaller class sizes and some have also been able to perform on-campus COVID testing for segments of their population, an option not generally available to publicly funded schools.

The Hun School of Princeton (Hun), for example, identified several of their positive cases through regular, pro-active COVID testing of student-athletes, boarders, and students in activities carrying heightened risk, such as outside club sports, and those in choral and wind instrument classes – and therefore were able to isolate any positive students to prevent transmission. They also tested all faculty and staff upon return from winter break.

All our area independent schools have been back offering some in-person learning, either fulltime in-person or hybrid, since the 2020-2021 school year began. Some have added in weeks of remote schooling when a student tests positive, due to multiple cases reported in a similar timeframe and/or post-vacation transmission concerns.

For example, Princeton Academy of the Sacred Heart (PASH), which chose not to provide COVID information to Princeton Perspectives, has offered in-person classes since the start of this school year. Multiple unnamed sources confirm that on more than one occasion the school transitioned one or more grades to all-virtual when a student tested positive. The sources also shared PASH opted to go fully remote from Thanksgiving through winter break, to protect against COVID.

Deciding remote vs. hybrid vs. fulltime in-person has not been an easy decision for any administrator. All schools that are primarily full-time or hybrid also offer families the option to be all-remote. Of our area schools, Princeton Charter School kept students completely virtual the longest. While Kindergarten, 1^st and 2^nd grades returned to hybrid learning in November, 3^rd and 4^th graders came back in January and 5-8^th just returned last month.

“Data is great except it’s limited in situations where we don’t have it, and we don’t have it on children in a lot of ways. That’s what contributed to an unnerving time for teachers, administrators and a lot of parents,” states Larry Patton, Charter School’s Head of School. “What we know now and how we feel about it now, it’s more comforting coming back to school now than it was then [September].”

With PreK-12 educators and staff now eligible for the vaccine in New Jersey, Princeton Public Schools feel more comfortable with the decision to expand their in-person hours. Phased in over the course of the next month, elementary grades are expected in school 4-days a week, every week. Middle and high school students will add one day, to come in-person 5-days a week, every other week.

Overall, the number of COVID cases reported at our area schools remains relatively low, as evidenced in the chart below (based on data provided to Princeton Perspectives from each school within the past two weeks).

Despite multiple attempts, we were unable to obtain information from Princeton Waldorf or The Lewis School. Chapin School was not willing to comment specifically or generally about COVID cases reported, but an unnamed source connected to the school told Princeton Perspectives they believe there have been at least four notifications of positive cases amongst students/staff.

The Lawrenceville School and Hun are the only schools within a 5-mile radius that offer boarding. To keep a handle on COVID, Lawrenceville boarding students just returned to campus this past weekend, having been all remote since the Thanksgiving break. Their in-person classes start up again March 30^th. Hun boarding students were remote from Thanksgiving break until school resumed in January. Later that month, two boarders received positive test results. Immediately, the school turned to an all-virtual learning model for the next week to control spread of the virus.

Multiple case reports have prompted other schools to take immediate action as well. After learning of more than eight unrelated cases in a 24-hour period, Princeton Day School went all-remote for a week in late November. And a month earlier, Princeton High School had two straight weeks of virtual school when a student and two teachers tested positive (two of the cases originated at out of school sports programs).

Schools, primarily for older grades, have attempted to bring back some semblance of after school activities and sports. Athletic teams were feared to be major contributor to the transmission of COVID-19, causing Governor Murphy to enact some rules to try and mitigate the damage. Organized sports activities in general were banned from early-on in the pandemic, then allowed to reorganize outdoors at the end of June. Contact practices were allowed again in October, which the state claims then led to “11 confirmed outbreaks of youth and school-aged ice hockey teams.” That caused Governor Murphy to sign a new executive order banning interstate youth sports competitions in mid-November. For most of December until early January, indoor sports were all shut down. They were allowed to resume January 2, 2021. The interstate sports ban has since been lifted for all sports, except hockey, which remains suspended until at least March 31^st.

“In our organization, we did not experience any “mass” transmission amongst players and/or families. There were concerns that this was happening across the state, and there are examples of teams that had mass transmission amongst players and families,” says Kevin Welsh, Princeton Youth Hockey Association (PYHA) Board Member and Assistant Coach.

To protect their players and coaches, PYHA instituted a stringent COVID protocol that included participants responding to a questionnaire, taking temperatures, requiring masks when helmets are off and closing down locker rooms. Welsh estimates 7-10 PYHA players have contracted the virus, but not from participating in one of their events.

“As part of our COVID Protocol, and in accordance with CDC guidelines, we have had several instances where a single team was shut down for a period of time due to a positive test by a player, or close contact with a family member who tested positive,” notes Welsh. “In all of these instances, we have not had a single report of another transmission or infection due to contact, so we feel that these protocols have worked as designed to halt any possible subsequent infections. After adhering to CDC guidelines for quarantining, all of these teams returned to play.”

Just last month, NJ lifted the ban on attendance at some sporting events, with parents being allowed indoors to watch their children play. On March 1^st, large venues opened to fans at 10% capacity for indoor events, 15% capacity outdoors. This follows a trend of other expansions, largely linked to the decline in numbers and vaccine rollout.

During the period when vaccine was provided by the state to the Princeton Health Department, 811 residents received their two doses. And in the first eight weeks of vaccine distribution, the department worked with the Mercer County Health Officer’s Association to deliver over 4,000 doses.

“In just the last three weeks, the Princeton Health Department has noticed incredible increases in the number of residents who have been vaccinated,” shares Grosser. “Nearly 1 in 3 individuals we contact to schedule for a vaccination has already been vaccinated elsewhere. If this continues, we are optimistic we will have a majority of the eligible population vaccinated in the next few months.”

There is also hope, with the addition of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the State’s vaccine supply will increase and allow for municipal distribution once again. This would allow the Princeton Health Department to vaccinate local residents who are physically restricted and can’t travel for the immunization.

With the unknown protection against variants and until we reach a comfortable level of herd immunity, Grosser suggests we can continue to keep Princeton’s COVID cases down by getting vaccinated as soon as you are eligible, socializing safely and continuing to wear a mask.

Lisa Jacknow

Lisa Jacknow spent years working in national and local news in and around New York City before moving to Princeton. Working as both a TV producer and news reporter, Lisa came to this area to focus on the local news of Mercer County at WZBN-TV. In recent years, she got immersed in the Princeton community by serving leadership roles at local schools in addition to volunteering for other local non-profits. In her free time, Lisa loves to spend time with her family, play tennis, sing and play the piano. A graduate of the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, Lisa was raised just north of Boston, Massachusetts but has lived in the tri-state area since college. She is excited to be Editor and head writer for Princeton Perspectives!

It has been a year of difficulties and loss, but it has also been a year of innovation. To get through the pandemic, the world has relied upon advances from biotechnology companies, pharmaceutical entities and other scientists. Due to Princeton’s location in the center of so many of these establishments, many contributions to help, heal and prevent the virus have taken place in our own backyard.

HOMEGROWN VACCINE

The most notable is Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine that just received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the last day of February. Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) headquarters are nearby in New Brunswick, with its Janssen offices also nearby in Titusville.

The vaccine’s journey began in January 2020, when J&J started working towards developing a vaccine. In March, its Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies collaborated with Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to research vaccine candidates. Luckily, Janssen had already been working with an immune stimulating platform called AdVac. AdVac has been used in a vaccine for Ebola and in investigational vaccines for HIV and RSV. It uses a version of adenovirus 26 (Ad26) which normally causes a common cold but has been disabled, so it won’t make you sick, and passes its genetic code into the body to get your immune system to react and fight the virus.

Working with several partners in the U.S., Europe, India and South Africa, multiple manufacturing sites were developed. In an effort to move things along quickly, the Phase 1 and 2 trials were combined, and in July testing began in 1,000 healthy patients. At its facility in the Netherlands, J&J prepared to produce a trial supply, which it launched in August. September saw the trial expand to tens of thousands of people and by November, the vaccine candidate was completely created, made and filled. In January 2021, the manufacturing process in the Netherlands proved it was reliable, and the EUA was sought in the U.S. as well as its European counterpart.

“Doing our part to combat the greatest public health crisis in living memory has been a huge undertaking for our company. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the incredible teams that made this milestone a reality, and to each and every one of my 135,000 colleagues for living into Our Credo values with great resilience and agility to ensure we keep meeting the healthcare needs of all who rely on Johnson & Johnson,” says J&J Chairman and CEO Alex Gorsky.

The benefits of this new vaccine are that it requires only one shot and it can be refrigerated for months compared to its predecessors from Pfizer and Moderna, which require two doses and ultra-low storage temperatures.

On March 3^rd, J&J announced an unprecedented partnership with another NJ-based pharmaceutical company, Merck, to help provide more supply. Merck, headquartered in Kenilworth, NJ, will use two of its U.S. facilities to “produce drug substance as well as formulate and fill vials of the vaccine,” according to J&J. That same week New Jersey received its first delivery of the vaccine.

LOCAL IMMUNIZATION EFFORT

Another nearby company is hoping that its vaccine innovations will also help in the fight against COVID-19. OncoSec, headquartered in Pennington, is a cancer immunotherapy company. Its advances in signaling a patient’s immune response to fight has been used to create cancer-fighting solutions since its inception. When COVID hit, OncoSec realized it could translate its techniques to fight a virus like this just the same.

Simply put, healthy immune cells have something that signal your body to have a pro-inflammatory response. It’s called IL-12. OncoSec has learned to code DNA with IL-12 (a creation they named TAVO), then, using a special energy field, get that TAVO inside of a cell that’s lacking an immune response and force that cell to produce one.

“When you run energy in and around the membrane of the cell, it creates micro pores just big enough for the DNA to pass through the membrane of the cell,” explains Dan O’Connor, CEO of OncoSec. “When that energy is put into that setting for about 2 seconds, the DNA moves inside and then when the energy stops, the membranes return to normal and the DNA is now trapped inside the cell, which tells the cell to make IL-12.”

For the past 12 years, OncoSec has been working to inject tumors with Il-12 to get them to respond to and fight off cancers. When the pandemic hit, they realized the immune response triggered by a vaccine could be enhanced by TAVO. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) agreed and offered them the chance to license the spike glycoprotein. The difference is this glycoprotein is found in an RNA version in the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, but OncoSec uses a DNA version.

In collaboration with Providence Cancer Center in Portland, OR, OncoSec is now in a Phase 1 clinical trial of its vaccine – CORVax12. The trials are taking a look at two things. First, using the spike protein and TAVO in up to 36 healthy patients, by administering it into the skin. Researchers are looking to see if it not only enhances a vaccine but creates a better one. Previous vaccine trials have only been done on healthy people, so the second thing this trial is looking at is to help cancer patients get vaccinated and fight cancer at the same time.

“When a cancer patient is getting treatment, it could interfere with a vaccine,” notes O’Connor. “As an enhancement, if we use the tumor as a nexus to present the antigen, the immunologically more relevant place to go, could that be a way in which you could develop a prophylactic COVID vaccine for cancer patients and also be giving them something we’ve seen consistently that can shrink their tumors?”

OncoSec is hoping so. Unlike the large ones that have vaccines already in use, it’s a small company, with the clinical team, regulatory team and back-office functions of its operations all housed in Pennington (its research lab and engineering are in California) and they are now supporting the study in Oregon, providing it with all of the essential elements to run it. Within a month or two, there is hope things will proceed onto Phase 2, analyzing and monitoring the data. Because it uses energy to direct the cell, a non-physical and non-toxic method, there tend to be few side effects as well. If this immunological advancement proves viable, it could open doors to enhance persistence in the vaccines already in use, be a new vaccine in its own right or for many other future opportunities.

NEIGHBORLY ASSESSMENTS

While OncoSec is working on vaccinations, down the road in Carnegie Center sits a small pharmaceutical company that has been helping in other ways to fight COVID. Fosun Pharma USA, which was formed four years ago and hopes to staff 25 people by the end of this year, is backed by a big public company, Fosun Pharma in China. When the virus hit the U.S., they started bringing in masks and sending ventilators around the country. It then developed a PCR test kit, and through its partners, antibody and antigen testing kits.

“We did the study here,” shares Lily Zou, CEO of Fosun Pharma USA. “The manufacturing is done in China, but we have been working with local (US) labs to get testing and FDA authorization.”

In April of last year, Fosun USA filed for and received EUA for the PCR test, known as Fosun COVID-19 RT-PCR Detection kit, that was developed by its parent company in China. To date, it has provided for approximately 400,000 U.S. laboratory tests. Its accuracy for positive samples is 99.51% and it has an accuracy rate of 96.44% with negative samples. Fosun USA also has a Quickkit COVID-19 Rapid Antibody Test and a Quickkit COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Test, created by Chinese partners.

“For the antibody kit, our partner has FDA authorization for certain usage in labs. We don’t have FDA authorization yet for use at Point of Care as that authorization requires more data,” states Zou. “The Antigen was submitted but not yet authorized at all. We are working on expansion for antibody and antigen authorization.”

Fosun USA currently imports the test kits from China, then from their warehouse in Tennessee, ships across the country. So far, the most sales have been in Arizona and California, though Bergen New Bridge Medical Center in New Jersey is a big customer. Looking ahead, they are working on a neutralizing antibody test as well as other diagnostics and products related to COVID.

UNIVERSITY CONTRIBUTIONS

Princeton University has also put forth many efforts in the fight against COVID-19. These efforts have focused on the creation of Personal Protection Equipment and most notably on breathing assistants, such as ventilators and monitoring devices.

When the pandemic started making its way through Europe in March 2020, Cristiano Galbiati was on sabbatical and in lockdown in Milan, Italy when he had an idea for a new high quality, cost-effective ventilator.

“The dire need of ventilators became immediately noticeable,” recalls Galbiati, Princeton University Professor of Physics, who immediately reached out to many of his colleagues. “The project was buoyed by the enthusiasm of a few hundred colleagues in making available their expertise in handling gases for an applied project that could benefit the society at large, at a moment of dire need. Organizing a very strong collaboration around this goal was the easiest part of the job: people did not need to be motivated to take part in this enterprise.”

Galbiati took his experience working with finding dark matter and applied it to the creation of a ventilator – pushing oxygen and nitrogen into a person’s lungs. He led a team of more than 200 worldwide experts, mostly from Princeton University and Canada’s Queen’s University, including Nobel Prize-winning Physicist Dr. Art McDonald of Canada. They helped take this idea further and in just 42 days the Mechanical Ventilator Milano (MVM) received FDA approval.

The Canadian government, like other countries, wanted to make sure it was taking care of its needs. McDonald helped connect the team to Vexos electronic manufacturing in Toronto, Canada which was awarded a contract.

“So, we actually manufactured the ventilators here in Markham, Canada (a suburb north of Toronto), built and delivered 6,000 ventilators to the Canadian government to replenish their stockpile,” describes Wayne Hawkins, Vexos Senior VP and General Manager. “We replenished them, candidly they haven’t been deployed to hospitals yet, but they are ready to go.”

Vexos’ sister facility in Ohio was ready to fill a U.S. contract as well but as the curve lowered, the U.S. government cancelled a lot of ventilator contracts and did not end up securing any MVMs.

“The role of myself and many other US scientists was truly essential to secure the success of the project. While I led the prototyping effort in Italy, many US scientists played a key role in contributing to the design, reviewing the performance of prototypes, and preparing the documentation for certification,” Galbiati adds.

Ventilators have been an essential tool in helping people recover from COVID-19, but another group of Princeton University Professors learned from Penn Medicine there were also other needs in breathing assistance. Particularly, when patients don’t need full intubation but do need oxygen.

So last spring, Princeton Physics Professors Daniel Marlow, Chris Tully and Associate Professor of Physics and Neuroscience Andrew Leifer worked with a team across various Princeton departments to develop a flow meter– meant to work in conjunction with Helmet non-invasive ventilation (NIV). The helmet system has many advantages for treating COVID patients, but due to lack of proper monitoring equipment, has the risk of unexpected drop in air flow that could lead to recirculation of CO2 or even asphyxiation. The Princeton Open Ventilator Monitor (POVM), as it has been named, is meant to monitor the air flow and other important data regarding a patient’s breathing and alarm clinicians through a remote monitoring station of any issues. Within six weeks, for less than $300 dollars each, the team produced and tested 50 devices. Then went in search of FDA authorization.

“As it happens, it is much harder to get FDA approval for a device than it is to design and build a device (at least for something of this nature),” explains Professor Daniel Marlow. “One thing that makes the EUA process difficult is that it involves not only the device itself, but also the organization that manufactures it. Our initial efforts at approval foundered when the company we had lined up to serve as manufacturer became non-responsive.”

Today, the professors are hoping their article on the POVM is accepted to a peer reviewed journal. And, it may be seeing a future manufacturing road ahead.

“Recently we have lined up another company that seems to be motivated to make this work,” adds Marlow.

Once production is secured, there is hope to acquire FDA approval and see their equipment used on patients.

Though cases of COVID-19 are declining and vaccination efforts seem to be demonstrating significant success, scientists, biotech firms and pharmaceutical companies in and around the Princeton area continue to work towards their goals of helping patients and eradicating the virus. NJ may be known for high taxes and old infrastructure, but Central NJ is certainly making an impact with its scientific advances.

Lisa Jacknow

Lisa Jacknow spent years working in national and local news in and around New York City before moving to Princeton. Working as both a TV producer and news reporter, Lisa came to this area to focus on the local news of Mercer County at WZBN-TV. In recent years, she got immersed in the Princeton community by serving leadership roles at local schools in addition to volunteering for other local non-profits. In her free time, Lisa loves to spend time with her family, play tennis, sing and play the piano. A graduate of the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, Lisa was raised just north of Boston, Massachusetts but has lived in the tri-state area since college. She is excited to be Editor and head writer for Princeton Perspectives!