NEIDL in the News
Novel Coronavirus Leads To Questions At WGBH News Forum
Original article from WGBH by Kevin G. Andrade. March 8, 2020 Discussion of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 dominated the Boston Museum of Science Sunday as WGBH News' All Things Considered host Arun Rath moderated a panel on the topic titled "A Community Conversation On Coronavirus." "I feel excited about this, not only... More
The Conspiracy Theories about the Origins of the Coronavirus, Debunked
Original article from Vox by Eliza Barclay. March 4, 2020 The signs that the small, scattered coronavirus outbreak in the United States could spiral into a larger-scale problem are growing. A new analysis, first reported by STAT, found there are likely now 500 to 600 (mostly undetected) cases of Covid-19, the... More
How the Greater Boston Biomedical Community is Tackling the Coronavirus
Original article from The Boston Globe by Ronald B. Corley, George Q. Daley, Penny M. Heaton, Arlene H. Sharpe, and Bruce D. Walker. March 5, 2020 The number of novel coronavirus cases is growing rapidly. The infectious pathogen SARS-CoV-2 — and Covid-19, the often-serious disease it can cause — has already... More
COVID-19: What You Should and Shouldn’t Do Now
Original article from Futurity. March 4, 2020 The outbreak of COVID-19, which began in China in December, has since migrated across borders and oceans to at least 47 countries and has resulted in nearly 3,000 global fatalities. Last week, world stock markets tanked over the economic fallout resulting from the spread... More
Coronavirus Is Here. Will Quarantines Help? (Audio w-Nahid Bhadelia)
Original audio from Short Wave on NPR by Maddie Sofia. March 4th, 2020 China has told millions of its citizens to stay home; Italy has locked down entire towns; and yet the coronavirus keeps popping up in new places. With cases now reported in numerous states, from California to Massachusetts, Short... More
You Had Coronavirus Questions. We Had Doctors Answer Them
Original article from The Boston Globe by Felice J. Freyer. March 3, 2020 As coronavirus cases increase in number, so do the questions from Globe readers. Here are some of the more common queries submitted to us in the past few days. In many instances, it’s too early to provide firm... More
BU NEIDL Scientists Join International Coronavirus Research Effort
Original article from The Brink by Kat J. McAlpine. March 2, 2020 Amid growing alarm that the novel coronavirus has been transmitting silently among US communities for as long as six weeks, Boston’s top infectious disease researchers, including scientists from Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), met Monday on... More
The US Has Its First ‘Community Spread’ Coronavirus Case
Original article from WIRED by Adam Rogers. February 26, 2020 During the press conference where President Trump announced that Vice President Mike Pence would be taking charge of domestic efforts to combat SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus spreading internationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also announced that the outbreak had... More
As CDC Warns of Coronavirus’s Spread in US, Officials Reveal That More Than 600 In Mass. Have Been Monitored For Illness
Original article from Boston Globe by Felice J. Freyer. February 26, 2020 More than 600 Massachusetts residents who traveled to China recently have voluntarily quarantined themselves at home while being monitored for the novel coronavirus, health officials revealed Wednesday. So far, 377 have completed the quarantine without falling ill, and 231 are... More
Coronavirus Declared a Global Health Emergency by World Health Organization
Original article from Boston Herald by Rick Sobey, Mary Markos, Erin Tiernan, & Stefan Geller. January 30, 2020 Coronavirus has “escalated into an unprecedented outbreak” with more than 8,000 cases in a month, prompting the World Health Organization to declare a global health emergency, the United Nations agency’s chief said. “Over the... More
Coronavirus Outbreak Resembles SARS, But Virus Experts Say Science Moves Far Faster Now
Original article from WBUR CommonHealth by Carey Goldberg. January 29, 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... More
Outbreak Experts: What to Expect Next from New Coronavirus (Q&A Dr. Connor and Dr. Saeed)
Original article from BU Today by Jessica Colarossi. January 27, 2020 The world has been on high alert since December 2019, when a highly contagious respiratory illness caused by a new coronavirus began to break out across China. It has since spread to more than a dozen other countries, infected more... More
BU Closely Monitoring Coronavirus Outbreak
Original article from BU Today by BU Today Staff. January 22, 2020 Boston University officials are keeping a close eye on a coronavirus outbreak stemming from the Chinese city of Wuhan. The illness first appeared last month and has since begun spreading around the world, with the United States seeing its... More
Japan is Hoarding Viruses to Fight Bioterrorism at the 2020 Olympics
Original article from WIRED by Sabrina Weiss. October 21, 2019 As long as the current outbreak of Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo persists, there is a risk it could spread to another country. Since it was first declared in August 2018, more than 2,000 people have died, More
Why Japan Imported Ebola Ahead of the 2020 Olympics
Original article from Nature International Journal of Science by Mark Zastrow. October 15, 2019 Japan is preparing for tens of thousands of international tourists to descend on Tokyo for the Olympic Games next year — and that includes being ready for unwanted biological visitors. Last month, Japan imported Ebola and four other... More
Officials Say EEE Remains A Threat Until A Hard Frost. What Is That Exactly?
Original article from WBUR CommonHealth by Angus Chen. October 16, 2019 So far this year, 12 people have contracted Eastern equine encephalitis virus, or EEE, in Massachusetts, and as of Friday, four of those people have died from the disease. The latest death was Scott Mosman, a 58-year-old man from Taunton, whose family says... More
Tough Call: ABC News Podcast featuring Dr. Colpitts (Audio)
Original audio from Start Here from ABC News by Brad Mielke. September 24th, 2019 Tough Call: ABC News Podcast featuring the NEIDL's Dr. Tonya Colpitts. Interview begins at 17:33 Click to listen more Start Here Episodes
The Facts About Triple E (Interview with Dr. Colpitts)
Original article from WCAI by Heather Goldstone and Elsa Partan. September 23rd, 2019 It’s officially fall, and temperatures have turned cooler but one unwelcome part of summer continues to linger – and that’s the risk of the mosquito-borne EEE virus. Massachusetts state officials this past week confirmed an eighth case of EEE... More
EEE is Untreatable and Can Be Deadly. So Why is There Little Prospect for a Vaccine?
Original article from The Boston Globe by Felice J. Freyer. September 11, 2019 It’s been a bad year for Eastern equine encephalitis in Massachusetts. The mosquito-borne virus claimed the life of a Fairhaven woman and infected six other people, including a 5-year-old Sudbury girl. EEE rarely makes people ill, but when it... More
Here’s Everything We Know about the Lethal Eastern Equine Encephalitis Virus
Original article from The Brink by Jessica Colarossi. September 3, 2019 For the first time since 2013, eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) virus—a rare but often fatal mosquito-borne virus—has been found in Massachusetts. Since the beginning of August, five people have tested positive for the virus, and one woman from Bristol County... More