scientificamerican
3 Steps to Detect and Stop Disease Outbreaks before They Become Pandemics To detect and stop disease outbreaks similar to COVID, health professionals must test for pathogens, share data widely and be prepared with a response In January 2020, news outlets around the world reported a disease outbreak in China caused by a new pathogen. For a while, the now all-too familiar disease called COVID-19 appeared to be mostly contained in China—at the start of the final week of January, there were 2,700 confirmed cases in the country and only around 40 cases elsewhere. The rest of the world scrolled past the headlines, failing to see what was coming. scientificamerican Tom Inglesby, a physician and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, however, recognized some alarming signs in China. Health-care workers were becoming ill in large numbers; young, healthy people were dying; large temporary hospitals were...