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An assembly of biotechnology leaders in February, an occasion for “super propagation” coronavirus with a worldwide transmission chain.
By Carl Zimmer
On February 26, 175 executives from the biotechnology company Biogen gathered at a Boston hotel for the first night of a conference. At the time, coronavirus was a remote problem, basically limited to China.
But the virus was present at the conference, spreading from one user to another. A new study suggests that the assembly became a mass market event, sowing infections that would affect tens of thousands of people in the United States and in countries so far away. Singapore and Australia.
The study, which the authors published on Tuesday and has still been published in a clinical journal, offers an unprecedented look as coronavirus can spread given smart opportunities.
“This is a valuable study,” said Dr. Joshua Schiffer, a physician and mathematical model expert who studies infectious diseases at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and was not interested in research.
Dr. Schiffer said the new genetic evidence fits well with what epidemiologists and disease modelers have learned about coronavirus. Biogen’s conference, he said, is just one of many similar occasions that amplified and spread the virus in its first months. “Don’t creo. es a coincidence at all, ” he says.
The effects come from an assignment that began in early March at Harvard Broad Institute and MIT, a study center that specializes in large-scale genome sequencing. While a wave of Covid-19 patients crashed at Massachusetts General Hospital, Broad’s studies analyzed the genetic clothing of Scientists also analyzed samples from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which conducted tests in Boston at homeless shelters and nursing homes. In total, scientists analyzed the viral genomes of 772 other people with Covid-19 between January and can.
The researchers then compared all those genomes to hint at the origin of the virus. When a virus replicates, its descendants inherit its genetic material. If a random mutation appears in one of your genes, it will also be passed on to subsequent offspring. The vast majority of these mutations do not adjust the behavior of the virus, but researchers can use them to track the spread of an epidemic.
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