AMES, Iowa – Public health labs determining whether people have COVID-19 have become at least overworked or, at worst, overwhelmed, leading animal disease labs to provide help. Rodger Main, director of the Veterinary Diagnostic Lab at Iowa State University, said early in the COVID-19 outbreak, he and leaders from the University of Iowa’s State Hygienic Lab got on the phone to discuss how they could collaborate. “In that conference call, it became clear what their constraint was … largely around this high throughput nucleic acid extraction,” Main said. “Those instruments and technologies are things that we use day to day in the diagnostic lab.” HUMAN ANIMALS The Oklahoma Animal Disease Diagnostic Lab, or OADDL, may have gone the furthest the fastest to support testing for COVID-19. “Turns out, not all animals are humans, but all humans are animals,” Kenneth Sewell said. He oversees OADDL as the vice president for research at Oklahoma State University. “We are now dually certified,” he…