How An Early Plan To Spot The Virus Fell Weeks Behind

Short Wave

NPR

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4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2020

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

In several major cities, public health officials work every year to monitor the flu. It's called sentinel surveillance. And as early as mid-February, the government had a plan to use that system to find early cases of the coronavirus, by testing patients with flu-like symptoms.

But NPR's Lauren Sommer reports the effort was slow to get started, costing weeks in the fight to control the spread of the virus. Read more from Lauren's reporting here.

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Transcript

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0:31.2	Maddie, so if I hear with mpr science correspondent Lauren summer haylorn.
0:35.2	Hey, Maddie.
0:36.7	So today you've got a story that starts a long, long time ago.
0:42.3	February 13th of this year.
0:46.3	Yes, long ago.
0:48.1	Morning everybody.
0:49.3	Congress was still holding regular hearings.
0:52.0	In the Senate, you know, it was a run of the mill hearing on the 2021 budget.
0:56.1	Health and human services secretary Alex Azar told a committee about a plan that the
0:59.9	government had for the coronavirus.
1:02.0	As of today, I can announce that the CDC has begun working with health departments in
1:06.8	five cities to use its flu surveillance network to begin testing individuals with flu-like
1:12.2	symptoms for the China coronavirus.
	...

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