BU NEIDL Scientists Featured in NOVA’s Special Coronavirus Episode
Original article from The Brink by Kat J. McAlpine, 2020
An hour-long PBS NOVA episode—which aired May 13—about the coronavirus pandemic featured scientists from Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), along with immunology and virus experts from across the United States, discussing the massive clinical and scientific response to the outbreak that has infected millions and killed more than 300,000 around the world.
“There are people who get this infection, shedding this virus before they get sick, and they may never have any symptoms,” Nahid Bhadelia, director of infection control at BU’s NEIDL, tells NOVA in its special “Decoding COVID-19” episode, which is now available to stream for free online. “This [pandemic] ends with most or all of us being immune to this virus, and ideally that’s through a vaccine.”
Bhadelia, who is also director of the Special Pathogens Unit at Boston Medical Center and was a frontline healthcare worker on the ground in West Africa during the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak, says the research and medical community was worried about the novel coronavirus from the moment they first learned of the mysterious respiratory illness spreading in Wuhan, China. “I think all of us held our breath because the question was, could this be that combination of a virus that’s both easy to transmit and perhaps maybe not as deadly as we might see with Ebola, but still have devastating impact on the resilience of our communities,” Bhadelia tells NOVA.