Coronavirus Outbreak Resembles SARS, But Virus Experts Say Science Moves Far Faster Now
Original article from WBUR CommonHealth by , 2020
Dr. Paul Sax remembers SARS all too well, and the similarities with the new coronavirus that has now killed more than 130 people are obvious: Both are coronaviruses first found in China. Both seem to have originated in bats. Both cause severe lung infections and worldwide alarm.
But Sax, the clinical director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, says this outbreak also strikes him as very different.
“What’s different is the pace of scientific discovery,” he says. “It’s like someone pressed the fast-forward button, and we’re accelerating through things that took much, much longer then.”
Case in point: With the latest DNA technology, the full genetic makeup of the new coronavirus was immediately analyzed and shared in a public database.
“That happened within a couple of weeks — actually less than two weeks,” Sax notes.
When you know the DNA sequence of a virus, you can develop a diagnostic test for it. And that “is exactly what happened, as soon as the sequence came out,” says Mohsan Saeed, a virologist at Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories.