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Centers for Disease Control

Atlanta, Georgia

October 14

“Two more reports on Epi-X, from Chicago and Cincinnati,” the emergency-response coordinator said as she set the latest faxes in front of the CDC director. Epi-X, the Epidemic Information Exchange, was the encrypted Internet-based reporting network that allowed public-health agencies to share information about emergencies and threats. “They’re sending blood samples, but it appears to be the same strain of H1N6 as Seattle and Dallas.”

The CDC had determined that the new virus that was causing outbreaks worldwide was closely related to H1N5—the swine-flu strain that had swept through the Ukraine two years earlier. Like the N5 variation, this mutation caused pulmonary hemorrhaging and cardiopulmonary failure, but with a much higher mortality rate. It also killed indiscriminately, targeting all ages, races, and health profiles, and did not respond to any known treatments, so they’d given it a new designation.

Their technicians, along with the lab at USAMRIID, the military’s facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland, were working to isolate the variant, so far without success.

Outbreaks had now been reported on five continents. The initial ground-zero cases apparently occurred almost simultaneously in Colombia, Germany, China, the Congo, and the U.S., but the virus had spread rapidly from those countries to neighboring ones. The confirmed death toll, now topping twenty-eight thousand, was rising by the hour.

“Call WHO and tell them we recommend a global alert,” the CDC director instructed. The World Health Organization had helped establish GOARN, the Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network, an early warning, instant-transmission service intended to combat the international spread of dangerous outbreaks such as H1N6. “And get the secretary of health and human services on the line.”

“Right away, sir.”

 


Date: 2015-01-11; view: 863


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