The COVID-19 pandemic shook the world, but cancer doctors and researchers — no strangers to difficult challenges — were among the Johns Hopkins experts who led efforts to understand and contain this novel, history-making virus.

Cancer treatments often deplete immune cells, weakening the immune system, so the COVID-19 pandemic placedcancer patients among the most vulnerable to infection. Given the dangers the virus presented to patients, our doctors and nurses sprang into action to keep our patients safe.

It was all hands on deck, and administrative staff members also stepped up, helping to screen patients and visitors for signs of the infection.

Not unlike the early days of our Cancer Center, when doctors, scientists and nurses worked together to develop novel strategies to make progress against a disease that was poorly understood, ideas for how to treat the virus and ways to protect our patients were almost immediate.

Working together, our clinicians created guidelines for treatment to help prevent cancer patients from contracting COVID-19 and to help those infected with the virus safely continue cancer therapy. These guidelines were shared and adapted by other cancer care providers across the nation and the world.

A trained team made tens of thousands of COVID-19 testing kits in a Kimmel Cancer Center lab uniquely outfitted to meet special quality control standards required for manufacturing pharmaceutical products. Research laboratories throughout the Cancer Center donated supplies needed to complete the kits.

Within days of the outbreak, Gina Szymanski, M.S., R.N., incident commander, and MiKaela Olsen, D.P.N., clinical nurse specialist and operations chief of the Kimmel Cancer Center’s COVID-19 Command Center, opened the Curbside Shot Clinic — a drive-up treatment delivery system — for outpatients and a special urgent care bio clinic for patients with cancer who were infected with the coronavirus. 

Patients were able to drive up to the front of the Skip Viragh Outpatient Cancer Building, where they were met by nurses to have their blood drawn and checked and to receive single injections of therapy drugs, cancer vaccines, or growth factors that stimulate production of blood cells diminished by cancer treatments — every kind of treatment except chemotherapy IV infusions — without ever leaving their cars.

To provide care to patients with cancer who had COVID-19-like symptoms or who were already diagnosed with the virus, the nursing team quickly converted space in the Weinberg Building into an urgent care biocontainment clinic. The clinic — which is available to patients at all of our Kimmel Cancer Center locations — was uniquely set up to care for patients with infectious diseases, keeping them safe and cared for while preventing the spread of the infection to other patients. 

Radiation Oncology established special simulation and treatment rooms for adult and pediatric patients at all five of our Kimmel Cancer Center radiation oncology sites. Like the biocontainment clinic, these rooms were set up with unique air flow and filtering to care for patients with infectious diseases.

As a result of this quick action, just 26 Cancer Center patients became infected with the coronavirus — unrelated to their visits to Johns Hopkins — and most importantly, they all recovered.

In addition to caring for our own patients, our doctors and nurses cared for patients transferred from other hospitals and clinics throughout the state that were not set up to care for patients with COVID-19. We worked collaboratively with Maryland elected officials and our colleagues at the University of Maryland to construct a field hospital to address the additional strain the virus placed on Maryland.

On the research side, our researchers proposed an innovative therapy to prevent an inflammatory process called cytokine storm syndrome, which is associated with COVID-19 severity and death. A test of white blood cells was developed to identify individuals in need of early intervention to prevent the acceleration of their COVID-19 disease. Kimmel Cancer Center Director William Nelson, M.D., Ph.D., was appointed to head the Johns Hopkins committee charged with reviewing proposed research and activating the most promising projects.

“History is important, and it taught us that we can treat very sick patients as outpatients,” said Szymanski. “We don’t wing it, and we don’t place artificial limits on ourselves.” She reminds us that what the Kimmel Cancer Center team did to help our patients during COVID-19 is a continuation of what we’ve always done: work on the cutting edge of science and blaze new trails to make rapid progress against threats to health.