What it’s like to go into the lab at a biopharma company during the coronavirus pandemic

Like grocery store clerks and Amazon delivery drivers, they’re among the essential workers of the coronavirus pandemic: the biopharma employees who must still go in to the lab or the manufacturing plant. But for these employees, going to work means facing elevated risk that they might be infected while taking public transportation, passing a colleague in the hallway, or peering over a Petri dish.

The companies that employ these on-site workers are navigating a series of once-unimaginable questions: Which research and manufacturing projects can wait? Which can’t? And what kinds of safeguards need to be put in place to protect on-site workers?