1/n The reason why we knew early about Seattle outbreak of #coronavirus was because of sentinel surveillance work by independent scientists. Such surveillance never got totally underway in other cities. So other U.S. hot spots may not be fully detected yet nature.com/articles/d4158…
2/n The original goal was to implement sentinel surveillance in 5 cities to detect early spread. It was announced in testimony before Senate by HHS. It was expanded to also include Honolulu. Idea was to test indeterminate cases of flu like illness to see if it was #coronavirus
3/n It was delayed by lack of diagnostic capability to test samples. When it was finally implemented, samples had to be sent to CDC lab which had limited capacity, meaning the surveillance effort was small. It was not expanded beyond original six cities.
washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02…
washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02…
4/n Other countries like Netherlands have stood up robust sentinel surveillance efforts and are detecting early, hidden community spread of #coronavirus. Our experience in Seattle shows how important this approach can be. We should still press forward to implement such a system.
5/n And we should be grateful to scientists in Seattle who had foresight, courage, skill to press ahead with this endeavor. That effort laid groundwork for U of W to have a lab effort ready that’s now providing significant testing capability. Their early efforts will save lives.
