The expert bioterrorism Baltimore, which COVID South Korea 19 response Inspired

On 2 October 2001, a press photographer of 62 years of Bob Stevens the first victim of a coordinated series of anthrax attacks was to be hospitalized. Stevens deadly pathogens inhaled after opening stitched one of several letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to the offices of prominent senators and the media on the US Over the next seven weeks, he and the other four would die because of their exposure , for a traumatized nation nor the individual deadly terrorist attack in the history of mankind reeling September 11, was a disturbing realization that there was a new wave of challenges to American security. In early 2002, President George W. Bush announced $11 billion in bioterrorism funding, launching a ten-year program to establish action plans for such large cities like New York and Boston solve the case of an attack mass would be to deal with. But little did he know that nearly 20 years later, their plans to fight such a hypothetical attack would the world be used on the opposite side, a nation inspired answer to a completely different outbreak of infectious disease. After all, in 2001, he had only worn bat few Americans Crown is one, least of all Sid Baccam, the Baltimore-based epidemiologist ideas for dealing anthrax attack would then be used by a team of doctors from South Korea to race find a way to control a COVID- 19 epidemic that the control quickly was out device. In the decade after the anthrax attacks, Baccam working as a scientist for Innovative Emergency Management (IEM), a company that works with federal agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), such as the National Institutes of Health ( NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to simulate responses to national emergencies has been launched to deploy as soon as possible one of the most influential thinkers of possibilities for the design of life-saving drugs. “The anthrax attacks a lot of people got the attention,” says Baccam. “No one saw it coming. It ‘s been awarded the first time that government agencies such as HHS, CDC and NIH together and said,’ Wow, we kind of got lucky, because this was a very targeted attack, but what if this was a worst case scenario in which they were affected millions of people what would we do? ‘and more and more we investigated this, it was quite clear that the reaction speed of life would be saved. ” Baccam realized that he needed a way to control the waves of panic that would likely be exhausted by the population, as soon as the news of an attack. He theorized that a city like New York would have several hundred hub that creates he calls “delivery points” or POD-located in public buildings such as universities or colleges, where people could go and take drugs. And with millions of medication needed about 48 hours to a distribution period, the pods should have been made more efficient in order to power to control people and prevent them from being overwhelmed. “They want people as efficiently as possible, but you fight against the behavior of human nature to panic,” he says. It was “One idea is to have this great building, and set with more lanes as a grocery store to a large number of people through as quickly as possible to move. Some of the biggest POD, you would need at a time in which about 120 people shifts of 12 hours of work to try to save lives. “popped political tensions on the Korean peninsula in 2018, tensions between North and South Korea were aimed primarily a result of the current North’s nuclear program. Jin Yong Kim, a specialist in infectious diseases at Incheon Medical Center, has been asked by the Korea Centers officials for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) intends to conduct a study, as large quantities of drugs could be people Korea South which are distributed the event of a bioterrorism attack. “Since Korea is a divided country, a standing army for terrorism is being prepared,” says Kim. “The KCDC has a bioterrorism response department, and it is their duty to always be prepared for bioterrorism in advance.” His research just pulled Baccam ideas, in particular the dedicated hub creation project for the delivery of drugs, “We have learned that in large targeted services communities require a lot of personnel and equipment, workers, as well as making the field of health care, “he says. But while Kim suspected Ebola patient was treated in 2014, and the Korean victims of the MERS outbreak in 2015, had little idea that these structures might be required as part of the emergency measures for a natural pandemic soon. On January 19, 2020 Kim treated the first patient to test positive for COVID-19 in South Korea. A month later, a super-spreading outbreak of the Church of Jesus Shincheonji in Daegu, the fourth largest city in the country, has seen the number of cases reported has increased from 31 to more than 1,000 within a few days. At the Kyungpook National University Hospital in Daegu, the mood was a growing concern. “We knew that the test was the ultimate solution, control the epidemic,” said Ki Tae Kwon, a specialist in the Department of Internal Medicine. “If you can not distinguish patients confirmed by other members of the hospital staff will be infected and the hospital itself will be the epicenter. This is the most dangerous situation. But we knew that if we could find a way to increase our ability to test quickly, it would be like Wuhan in China. “For driving tests crown as the number of cases COVID-19 swelled the people of Daegu began to panic. Kwon recalls how some were even on the nearby city of Busan South Korea leads the second largest city to seek medical attention. One way that was sure to test a large number of people in urgent. On February 20, Kim remained all night to produce a possible test center the first draft, in part inspired by his studies of anthrax Baccam POD. Instead of using drugs, the pods would use to screen for COVID 19-mass, and the risk of infection is administered by medical personnel to reduce the test, the Daegu residents would be able to access it on their cars. The project was quickly passed to Kwon and his team in Daegu, and drive-through tests in the parking lot of Kyungpook National University Hospital its functioning only three days later. Soon there were six such centers in the city. “We tested 150 people a day,” says Kwon. “Some older versions to test 300 people a day.” In tests at an approximate rate of one third of the time every 10 minutes a run are available for traditional screening Korea may soon get a handle on the outbreak that few other nations have succeeded. By the end of March there were 79 drive-through with an app distributed through the national screening centers people who make them easy to find. In recent weeks, cases were COVID-19 optimized to the point that social distancing policies began to be relaxed. April 30 reported the KCDC no new domestic COVID-19 cases for the first time since February. Overall, there were only 211 cases of COVID-19 for one million people in South Korea from May 5 compared to 3587 cases per million in the United States. Kwon has questioned the value of drive-through test is in control of the pandemic. “It ‘s been very, very important to identify particularly in people who are asymptomatic or mild symptoms should be isolated or quarantined,” he says. “To control the outbreak, you need to find all these people.” A certain irony, however, remains the country for the possibility of a second wave, a result prepared to prove the probable regularly by the South Korean influx of visitors from Europe and the United States this possibility and previously it would have been triggered, Kim It has been in the design of a part in the center of screening Incheon international Airport will be able to test a walk through thousands of foreign travelers a day. Over the next few years, he suggests, drive-through centers themselves are converted into mass points for vaccines or treatments according Baccam original vision for POD anthrax withdrawal. There are, of course, a certain irony that the first drive-through screening centers COVID-19 in the United States until mid-March have been set, almost two months after the first reported case crown on American soil. Baccam had US regional parties for local government officials, the spread of the virus has been modeling and did not realize from the outset that the Koreans had been inspired by his previous work until he saw him, he had a certain number of publications were expelled Korean official medical science to test for drive-through national program. He says he does not know if any of the major bioterrorism preparations of the United States has been adapted to cope with the pandemic. “I know that in the sphere of public health who has plans for an influenza pandemic,” he says. “You can give them one that may not be able to learn from the things that we had planned for anthrax.” But he is happy that many thousands of miles away, his ideas were used to Save Life. “With a lot of what we do, mostly because they belong on bioterrorism, it is hoped that none of your work will never be put into practice must, because this means that something terrible has happened,” he says. “But in this case, I’m glad to see something for the response to bioterrorism response crown meant to help people could be adapted.”
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