Quarantine Zero, Part 1
“Got another sample for you Biontzky,” the airport agent handed him a cotton swab in a plastic bag.
“Thanks,” the young lab tech said.
“Came in from some country in Europe. One of those small islands.”
“Got it.”
“Yeah… well you know the drill.”
Biontzky was very familiar. He received ten or so of these samples every day. He spent his time in a small lab no bigger than a closet. It was the only place the airport could find the space. It was cramped but had all of the equipment he needed.
With his gloves and mask on, he opened the bag and swiftly moved the cotton swab to the machine. Here, he looked through the microscope and carefully extracted the biological material for inspection by piloting a pair of robotic tweezers.
The machine started whirring as Biontzky’s mind wandered. He stared at the time on his watch as sport scores flickered across the newswire. He didn’t hear as the machine dinged with an urgent alert.
Only as the red light started flashing did he regain his senses.
“What? What’s that light supposed to mean?” he wondered aloud.
He looked down at the screen where the test results were printing out. The test was positive. They had detected a virus. More astonishing were the genetic test results. It came up negative.
His fingers immediately starting poking his watch, though his eyes transfixed on the results. He was witnessing something nobody had ever seen before. There was a new virus, and it would’ve spread here had they not caught it.
But this was probably not patient zero. If it had come from somewhere, others there could be infected. They would have to act fast in case it became widespread.
“Dr. Wizjoner’s office, how may I help you?” came a voice from the tinny speaker on his watch.
“It’s Zenon, from the airport. I need to speak with her. It’s urgent.”
“Dr. Wizjoner is currently on holiday with her family.”
“She needs to cut her vacation short. It’s a Code Orange.”
There was a short silence as the voice assistant processed something.
“She will be returning to her office shortly.”
Biontzky nodded. She would be able to deal with this problem soon. Until then, he looked back at the cotton swab and wondered what would happen next.
What would it look like if COVID-19 was the final pandemic? What if we were to really inspect our policies and institutions and put together a plan to prevent these things in the future? The CDC has begun a plan of viral surveillance on international travel. Hopefully we won’t need to catch anything, but it would be best to prepared for what to expect.
This is part one of two, where I hope to complete the story next time with another component to improved pandemic policy.