A May 30, 2020 Boston Globe article traced the path of the coronavirus through Massachusetts from its first known appearance in the state in early March, describing how elected officials, bureaucrats, health care workers, and researchers responded to the devastating crisis.
Among those featured in the article was Michael Mina, assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who had warned early on about the arrival of the coronavirus in Massachusetts. Aware that state labs didn’t have enough capacity to handle the high volume of testing that would be required during a pandemic, Mina pushed to develop a test for COVID-19—the disease caused by the virus—at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he is a virology lab director.
Mina told the Globe that he could see disaster approaching “like I had binoculars and I was watching a tidal wave rushing towards us.”
Mina and colleagues helped adapt the Broad Institute into a COVID-19 test processing center that was able to generate thousands of test results each day.
Read the Boston Globe article: The virus’ tale