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| Dean
Barry Bloom speaks to Senator Edward Kennedy. |
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Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, senior Democrat on the Senate
Committee on Health, Education and Labor, came to the Countway Library on
April 4 for a hastily arranged briefing on the SARS virus from HSPH and
HMS researchers. Megan Murray, assistant
professor in the Department of Epidemiology and a clinician in infectious
diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, produced a quick computer model
to demonstrate the potential spread of the disease in a metropolitan area
were no precautions taken. Explaining that because this is a new virus there
is no pre-existing immunity in the community, Murray estimated that in a
city of three million people, a single SARS case unchecked could lead to
90 percent of the residents being infected within five months.
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| Megan
Murray produced a computer model of a scenario for the potential spread
of SARS. |
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Also at the briefing, Dean Barry Bloom
asked that any additional funding to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health for public health
preparedness not be earmarked narrowly for the particular "disease
of the month" but be available to basic research and infrastructure-building
that would combat all emerging infectious diseases, whether natural or from
bioterrorism. Ralph Timperi, director of the Massachusetts State Public
Health Laboratory, who teaches a course at HSPH on outbreaks, reported that
a PCR test and an antibody test for the virus would be available through
the CDC in a matter of weeks. HMS professor Kenneth McIntosh described the
properties of coronaviruses of which SARS is thought to be a new variety.
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