Quarantine Zero, Part 2
Immediately as the eVTOL landed on the helipad above the hospital the door opened.
“Dr. Wizjoner, welcome back,” the hospital director greeted her.
“Mr. Lumens, the greeting isn’t necessary,” she replied tersely as she struggled to unbuckle her seat.
“Did you get a chance to…”
“Review the data that Zenon sent me? Yes. I had plenty of time while I was in the air,” she interrupted as she followed the director towards the elevator.
“I apologize for cutting your vacation short.”
“I don’t need the platitudes. I’m not here for you. I’m here because of the virus.”
The elevator stopped momentarily, then opened up to the penthouse office. It overlooked the river, giving her a wonderful view of tall oaks rising in the park on the other side. Yet her eyes focused on the screen in the room’s center.
“Here’s the genetic sequence from the airport,” she tapped something on her watch and then a series of letters appeared on the screen.
“That’s from Mr. Biontzky?”
“Yes. Now, I’ve been running models. The passenger sample was received yesterday. Even if we begin vaccine production today, it may take several weeks to inoculate the entire city.”
“By that point it would likely spread elsewhere.”
“Patient zero might be in quarantine, but others were on that flight and could be anywhere.”
“So I’ll ask the league of mayors to report their wastewater surveillance.”
“But that’s not enough. A lot can happen in a month. That’s many lifetimes for viruses.”
She tapped on her wrist. Suddenly the columns of letters split apart, filling the screen. The letters of each column changed colors.
“The hospital assistant believes that these three possible mutations are likeliest to occur in the next month. By the time our original vaccines are deployed, they may already be useless.”
“So what are you suggesting?”
“A pan-mutation vaccine. An infected person may have one of these four strains. A single vaccine could provide coverage against all of these.”
“That might be useful in theory, but what about in practice? How do we convince people to get inoculated against a virus that is hardly spreading? People won’t notice for many weeks and by then it’ll be a challenge to stop the spread.”
“That’s not my department. You’ll have to figure it out. But I doubt you really need that many people. If one unvaccinated person transmits to another unvaccinated person, the odds of success are 100%. If ten percent of the public are vaccinated, we cut down on a lot of potential infections.”
“Maybe I’ll work out some incentives scheme for those already visiting hospitals or pharmacies.”
Wizjoner pressed the button the elevator.
“I need to get down to the lab now. The technicians need this data. But one last piece of advice: don’t cause a panic. Pandemics were once scary things, full of unknown that constantly kept us off-guard. Today we know how to deal with these things ahead of time.”
This story concludes the one published last week(!) about the future of viral spread. Genetic testing and wastewater surveillance make it easier than ever to catch viruses and figure out exactly what they are. Once we have them, artificial intelligence can help us quickly develop prototype antivirals and track possible mutations.
Pandemics are terrible events but can be avoided. It isn’t easy, and maybe we’ll never reach a state of perfection, but the future seems bright.