At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in Iowa, testing supplies were in high demand and short supply. That’s when one local business stepped up to provide materials to the Community Health Center of Fort Dodge.

In early April, Elanco Animal Health donated just over 1,000 vials filled with a solution called viral transport media to the clinic at 126 N. 10th St.

Viral transport media, or VTM, is a preservative solution that keeps a virus active until it can be tested. When a health care worker conducts a swab test for the COVID-19 coronavirus, the swab is sealed in a vial of the VTM so it can be shipped to the state hygienic lab or other testing facility.

Elanco staff members Jason Hansen and Lee Stimpson delivered the VTM.

“This is the key component that we’re missing,” Renae Kruckenberg, chief executive officer of CHC told The Messenger in April. “We get a very limited supply from the state hygienic lab, so we have to be even more selective with testing than we normally would be.”

The VTM vials increased the health center’s capacity for collecting samples and were stored at 4 degrees Celsius in several refrigerators that are normally used to store vaccines during influenza season.

Elanco’s donation was very important to Kruckenberg and the Community Health Center staff.

“It truly means the world to me,” Kruckenberg told The Messenger. “When I reached out to them, it was one of those things where my fingers were crossed — I’d only told a couple people here that I was reaching out to them to see if they could do it, because I didn’t know.”

Elanco is the fourth-largest animal health company in the world and its Fort Dodge labs, located at 800 Fifth St. N.W., research and manufacture pharmaceutical vaccines for several animal industries.

Hansen said the Elanco labs had nearly all the ingredients for the VTM solution on hand already, and only had to order an inexpensive saline solution.

“During this unprecedented time, Elanco has been looking for ways to utilize our expertise to help,” Betsy Bowman, of Elanco’s manufacturing and quality organization communications team, told The Messenger in April.

“When the opportunity to help provide viral transport media for COVID-19 testing presented itself, we knew that our staff and site in Fort Dodge was uniquely positioned to help the community health services in this way. We are all in this together and this is one small way that we can help the community in which we live and work.”