HISTORIC MAJOR DONATION - LSU-Health Shreveport’s Center of Excellence for Emerging Viral Threats has announced it has received the largest private gift in its history. Dewey and Gigi Corley through their Chaparral Foundation, together with Margaret Place Properties, Inc., Frances and William Comegys, III, and the Family of Aaron and Peggy Selber, have committed a combined $1.2 million dollars to establish an endowment for the EVT Laboratory which was established back in March 2020 to address Covid-19.
"The center provides much-needed education and guidance, to testing to viral sequencing, to vaccine clinical trials. And now today what's happening over at the fairgrounds is large-scale mass vaccination and testing," said Kevin Flood, President and CEO of the LSU Health and Sciences Foundation
Dr. David Lewis, Interim Chancellor and Dean for the School of Medicine / LSU Health Shreveport said the gift will support the EVT lab well into the future.
"The gift that has been donated here really is what takes institutions like ours to the next level," Lewis said. "This will be something that will be an endowment and will give year after year after year throughout the history of this institution long after Covid."
The Center of Excellence for Emerging Viral Threats has processed more than 500,0000 Covid-19 PCR tests and administered over 100,000 COVID-19 vaccines.