'Another one was coming': Army scientists working on vaccine had long feared emergence of new coronaviruses
Sean D. Naylor National Security Correspondent
,Yahoo News•May 14, 2020
SILVER SPRING, Md. — On. Jan. 10, the day Chinese scientists published the coronavirus’s genetic sequence, Kayvon Modjarrad received a late-night call from his colleague Dr. Gordon Joyce, chief of the Emerging Infectious Diseases branch’s structural biology section at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
Joyce and Modjarrad, the director of the Emerging Infectious Diseases branch, had been working on coronaviruses together since 2012, when they were both research fellows at the National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center. They continued that work when WRAIR hired them away from NIH about five years ago. Indeed, when SARS-CoV-2 emerged, “we were the only ones actually in the DoD, at that moment, who were working on a coronavirus, in terms of research and development,†Modjarrad said.
The arrival of SARS-CoV-2 surprised neither doctor. “There were two coronaviruses that caused the common cold that were identified in people [from] 1965 to 2002,†Modjarrad said. “Since 2002 there have been five new human coronaviruses that have been isolated and dozens of bat coronaviruses as well. So this acceleration made us concerned that another one was coming.â€
The hub of the U.S. military’s effort to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus is deceptively quiet.
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