Broad Institute races to enable coronavirus testing
On March 9, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard core member Deborah Hung spoke urgently with her colleague at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Michael Mina, the associate medical director of the clinical microbiology laboratory and director of molecular virology diagnostics at the hospital. Hung, co-director of the Broad Institute’s Infectious Diseases and Microbiome Program, is on the medical front lines of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic as an attending infectious disease and critical care physician at BWH. That day, the number of presumptive and confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state had risen to 41 and, by the next morning, would more than double to 92, prompting Gov. Charlie Baker to declare a state of emergency. The following day, the World Health Organization would declare the coronavirus outbreak as a global pandemic. As the number of positive cases in the state grew, Hung and other physicians grew increasingly frustrated with the limited...