KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Kansas City research institute became part of the international novel coronavirus story this week when a unique, high-tech biocontainment pod it designed was used in the evacuation of more than 300 Americans quarantined on a cruise ship off the coast of Japan.
The U.S. State Department owns four of the units created by MRIGlobal, formerly the Midwest Research Institute.
The department said 14 of the Americans on the Diamond Princess who tested positive for the virus “were moved in the most expeditious and safe manner to a specialized containment area on the evacuation aircraft to isolate them in accordance with standard protocols.”
On Friday, federal health officials said more infections are expected among the people who were passengers aboard the ship and are currently in quarantine.
MRIGlobal created the containment pods — 44 feet long and 8 feet tall — in 2014 to use during the Ebola outbreak. They look like freight containers and were designed to eliminate the risk of transporting patients with contagious diseases.
“We don’t believe they’ve been used until now,” said MRIGlobal’s Dean Gray, who shepherded the creation of the units. “Certainly we’ve had training exercises with them, over the past several years, both internationally and nationally. But as far as we know this is the first time they’ve been deployed and used in an evacuation scenario of some capacity.
“We’re just so proud to be a part of it in any small way, because if we’ve helped a customer make a product that ultimately saves lives, what else can we ask for?”
Midwest Research Institute was founded by Kansas City business leaders after World War II, and over the years researchers there have worked on everything from defense projects, cancer research, renewable energy, rocket fuel development, astronaut clothing, even that candy coating on M&M’s.
Based on Volker Boulevard near the Country Club Plaza, its current work includes pharmaceutical studies, infectious disease surveillance and technology to counter weapons of mass destruction.
In 2014, during the outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa, the company developed mobile medical laboratories “with diagnostic capabilities” for the U.S. Defense Department, Gray said.
Then, the State Department and the Paul G. Allen Ebola Program contacted the company with a different request. Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates, pledged millions to fight the Ebola virus before he died in 2018.
With so many Americans — from first responders to workers with nonprofit organizations — headed to West Africa to help eradication efforts, the State Department worried that there was no way to safely bring sick people home without endangering others.
There was concern, too, that having no safe way to evacuate health workers who became ill would hurt efforts to recruit medical professionals.
“The best that we can do is one person at a time in a Gulfstream, and that is not going to cut it,” government officials told the company, according to Gray.
The feds needed something bigger: Some method of transportation large enough to hold four patients, four caregivers and the medical support needed to keep patients alive, safely sealed to contain the infectious disease within.
