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H1N1 Arrives in Kansas
By Brian Hart - Microbiologist III
April 24, 2009, Brian Hart’s lab had just finished a conference call about a new novel influenza virus that was striking throughout Mexico, California and Texas. Minutes after hanging up the phone, the lab got a call from an epidemiologist who had identified a couple of patients with suspicious symptoms and had recently traveled to the affected areas. The decision was made to rush the samples to the laboratory.
Results came back that indicated a novel influenza A virus. The lab repeated the test and confirmed the first result. They decided to send the sample to the CDC’s national headquarters in Atlanta for confirmation. The only problem was that it was early Saturday morning and the lab could not get it there using the normal means.
The decision was made to send it on the Kansas Governor’s plane. It was like something out of a movie: the package was handed off to a member of the emergency operations team who then hand-delivered the sample to a CDC staff member at a small airport in Atlanta. Eight hours later, Brian and his laboratory had their first confirmed cases of novel influenza virus, commonly referred to as the H1N1 virus.
In the next month, Brian and his fellow laboratorians tested as many samples as they normally tested over a five-year period. Brian says that it was exciting to finally execute the emergency response that the lab had been planning and preparing for many years. This situation demonstrated one of the things that make public health such an exciting field. You never know what disease might emerge next and sometimes you get to be on the leading edge of the response.
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