Information about the daily operation of AEM during the corona lockdown

This is done to assure accordance with the country’s recommendations and to increase our chance of coping in case a large number of caretakers develop COVID-19 at the same time.

There is reduced access to the AEM’s facilities and AEM is not available for experimental work or breeding-related procedures (such as tissue sampling, setting-up new breeding) during the lockdown.
AEM-staff will during the lockdown focus on animal husbandry and care.

The only exception is researchers, whose procedures have been assessed as critical by their Head of Department and therefore have been granted permission to perform critical procedures or finish critical experiments.

If you have been granted such permission, please comply with the general recommendations regarding hygiene and social distancing.

Please note these changes during the lockdown

• All breeding of well-established productive strains will be put on stand-by, which means that litters to be weaned during the lockdown period will be culled at 3-4 weeks of age
• The culling of litters from well-established strains will begin in week 13
• No new breeding will be established
• For the strains that have been identified as fragile, litters will be weaned and not culled.
  Researchers with fragile strains are encouraged to inform AEM asap about these, to ensure that weaned animals are not culled
• Technical work/assistance (such as but not limited to breeding reports, tissue sampling, tests, plug-checks) is cancelled
• Internal transport of animals will not be possible
• The TCF is closed in this period
• Agreements with AEM technicians regarding technical assistance cannot be made in this period
• All deliveries of animals have been cancelled, incl. export and import handling
• Please direct questions concerning critical procedures to AEM-veterinarians or AEM’s management team instead of the individual units

Tasks that AEM will continue to perform during the lockdown

• Daily observations
• Already established agreements about special observations of particularly fragile animals
• Feeding and watering
• Cage changing
• Sanitation and autoclaving of equipment
• For animals fed special diets this will continue as long as this diet is available after which the animals will receive standard diet
• Racks - cleaning and maintenance
• Health monitoring
• Registration of cages

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