Monday, November 26, 2012

Few more excerpts from article below

A few more excerpts from the Helen Branswell piece below:

Dr. Fouchier was front and centre in the laboratory effort during the 2003 SARS outbreak. It was his lab, at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, that proved what’s called Koch’s postulates — the test that confirmed that the newly identified coronavirus was actually causing the disease SARS.

During the early days of the SARS outbreak, the WHO rapidly put together a virtual network of laboratories, tapping into expertise around the world to combat the alarming new disease.

But this time? In the summer, Dr. Fouchier’s lab identified and sequenced the new coronavirus and developed a test for it. But since then, it’s been “radio silence,” Dr. Fouchier said in an interview Friday.

“Everything I’ve heard since then has just come from the lay press, which is completely in contrast to how we acted back in the SARS era,” he said.

“That was completely different during the SARS outbreak. We were all talking together, exchanging results and giving each other ideas about what to test, how to test, where to test. And none of that is happening now. We just have to rely that they’re doing the right thing.”
Officials in the know should be sharing more information, Dr. Osterholm agreed.
“At this point in any outbreak investigation, there clearly is more information that is known by health officials than likely has been shared,” he said.

“But if there were ever a time for complete transparency, now is the time. We’ve learned that in the past and I’d hate to see us have to relearn the lesson again.”

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