On Call by Anthony Fauci M.D

Author:Anthony Fauci, M.D. [Fauci, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

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For the next six years H5N1 fell off the radar screen. That changed in 2003 when it reemerged in China and spread to countries in Asia and Southeast Asia. Of concern were the sporadic human cases that occurred. In one situation, health officials could not rule out the possibility of human-to-human transmission within a family unit. This is what we were facing at the end of February 2004, when I returned from Iraq.

Over the twenty years that I had been director of NIAID, threats of pandemics almost never turned into actual pandemics, and there was no solid evidence at that point of efficient or sustained human-to-human transmission of H5N1 influenza, which would be the first indication of a looming pandemic. Nonetheless, we began the public health and scientific process of preparing for the worst. In the broad sense, the CDC was responsible for the public health aspects of the preparedness and response to a potential outbreak. They carefully tracked the cases in collaboration with their Chinese and other Asian counterparts and were prepared to identify, isolate, and contact trace infected individuals if the virus ever entered our country. At NIAID my colleagues and I began the process of doing what we do best—developing and testing vaccines against this new influenza strain.

As part of this effort, in the early fall of 2004, we launched the NIAID Influenza Genome Sequencing Project in collaboration with other HHS agencies and other non-HHS organizations to determine the complete genetic sequences of H5N1 viruses from thousands of chickens and from the occasional human who was infected. We rapidly provided the sequences to the broader scientific community funded predominantly by NIAID. This was information they required both to do the nuts-and-bolts research on the testing of sensitivity to known anti-influenza drugs such as Tamiflu and to begin the important process of developing a pre-pandemic vaccine. All this was proceeding very well. But then we hit a trouble spot on another front that diverted our attention.

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