UVA helps VA Dept. of Health and CDC to research infectious disease threats

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - Researchers with the University of Virginia hope learning about the spread of multiple infectious diseases will help the CDC and the public if another pandemic occurs.

“The CDC had seen from the pandemic that there were some gaps in our ability to surveil emerging infectious diseases,’ Doctor Amy Mathers said.

Researchers are using lessons from COVID-19 to better understand how diseases adapt and grow.

“The collective agreement and understanding that we are going to try and map out and understand the state of these viruses, as many of them as we can, with the resources we have so that we can be better prepared for the future emergencies,” Doctor Madhav Marathe said.

“There’s important collaboration between the people who are really good at doing the lab stuff, the people that are really good at looking at the analysis of that data, and as well as the people who are at the Department of Health that are the people who end up having to tell people you need to do X, you need to do Y, we need to collect this kind of data more, we need less of that,” Doctor Bryan Lewis said.

This network is a five year long project, but UVA researchers hope that the findings will prolong and expand the endeavor.

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