Five years after COVID-19's declaration as a pandemic, the world grapples with its response capabilities. While trust in scientists and between nations has waned, innovations are emerging. Erik Karlsson's team developed a portable lab designed to quickly identify circulating viruses, addressing delays in tracking disease spread. The COVID pandemic revealed serious weaknesses; notably, SARS-CoV-2 circulated undetected for months. Karlsson's lab enables near real-time detection, representing a significant improvement over previous methods, and stresses the need for better readiness for potential future pandemics.
Getting that type of data is expensive. It's difficult. And it takes a long time. We're finding things maybe a week or two weeks or even a month later.
COVID highlighted this problem. The medical community couldn't keep up with the virus... SARS-CoV-2 was circulating as much as two months before the first case was identified.
We're now ahead of the game. We're now detecting things almost in real time.
A lot of times we're on the back foot.
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