A Covid-19 Detective Tracks Disease Trail With Genetic Clues
A small team of biologists spanning the globe unravels — and tweets out — the virus’ stealthy transmission patterns in near real-time
In a few short weeks, Seattle-based biologist Trevor Bedford, 38, has emerged as one of the most famous epidemiologists in the world. His frequent tweets are seized upon by many of the globe’s top scientists and health policy makers. So far he has more than 170,000 Twitter followers, with thousands more joining every day.
But, unlike traditional epidemiologists, this disease detective working from his lab at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, doesn't do field work to track down Covid-19 patients’ contacts. Instead, Bedford and a handful of colleagues — spanning the globe from Seattle to Basel, Switzerland, and Wanaka, New Zealand —analyse hundreds of virus genomes from patient samples to trace where outbreaks came from, how they spread from one corner of the Earth to the next and, most important, detecting early signs of infection clusters.