POSTVILLE, Iowa — It wasn’t until their colleagues began to disappear that workers at Agri Star Meat and Poultry realized there was a killer in their midst.
First came the rumors that rabbis at the kosher plant had been quarantined. Then a man who worked in the poultry department fell ill. They heard whispers about friends of friends who had been stricken with scorching fevers and unbearable chills — characteristic symptoms of the novel coronavirus.
Where was the contagion coming from?
No one would say. Not Agri Star’s wealthy owner, who didn’t shut down production lines after cases were confirmed among workers. Not the Iowa Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which closed a complaint containing multiple allegations against the plant without an inspection. Not Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R), whose administration threatened to prosecute officials who released covid data and did not conduct testing at the plant until seven weeks after the first infections.
[Massive genetic study shows coronavirus mutating and potentially evolving amid rapid U.S. spread]
The mystery terrified Magdalena Toj García, a 36-year-old worker in the beef department who worried about bringing the virus home to her three young daughters. It infuriated John Ellingson, a council member in a nearby town desperate to know if his constituents were at risk.
Clockwise from left: Paraic Kenny, a tumor geneticist who turned his lab into a coronavirus sequencing facility. Magdalena Toj García and her husband, Rudy Pérez, both of whom have worked at the Agri Star plant for several years. John Ellingson, a council member in Waukon, Iowa, who sought the state's data on covid-19.
But it intrigued Paraic Kenny, a tumor geneticist turned disease detective, who knew that the killer had left behind vital clues.
The coronavirus mutates as it moves through its victims. Infectious particles swabbed from a patient’s nose carry small but distinctive differences in its genome that can be used, like a molecular bar code, to track where the virus came from and how it had been transmitted. By reading the virus’s RNA, Kenny could unveil how cases were connected to one another, exposing the secret spread of the disease.
The truth of what happened at Agri Star — and across America — is written in that code.
Much more at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/grap...coronavirus-outbreak-iowa/?itid=hp-banner-low
First came the rumors that rabbis at the kosher plant had been quarantined. Then a man who worked in the poultry department fell ill. They heard whispers about friends of friends who had been stricken with scorching fevers and unbearable chills — characteristic symptoms of the novel coronavirus.
Where was the contagion coming from?
No one would say. Not Agri Star’s wealthy owner, who didn’t shut down production lines after cases were confirmed among workers. Not the Iowa Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which closed a complaint containing multiple allegations against the plant without an inspection. Not Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R), whose administration threatened to prosecute officials who released covid data and did not conduct testing at the plant until seven weeks after the first infections.
[Massive genetic study shows coronavirus mutating and potentially evolving amid rapid U.S. spread]
The mystery terrified Magdalena Toj García, a 36-year-old worker in the beef department who worried about bringing the virus home to her three young daughters. It infuriated John Ellingson, a council member in a nearby town desperate to know if his constituents were at risk.
Clockwise from left: Paraic Kenny, a tumor geneticist who turned his lab into a coronavirus sequencing facility. Magdalena Toj García and her husband, Rudy Pérez, both of whom have worked at the Agri Star plant for several years. John Ellingson, a council member in Waukon, Iowa, who sought the state's data on covid-19.
But it intrigued Paraic Kenny, a tumor geneticist turned disease detective, who knew that the killer had left behind vital clues.
The coronavirus mutates as it moves through its victims. Infectious particles swabbed from a patient’s nose carry small but distinctive differences in its genome that can be used, like a molecular bar code, to track where the virus came from and how it had been transmitted. By reading the virus’s RNA, Kenny could unveil how cases were connected to one another, exposing the secret spread of the disease.
The truth of what happened at Agri Star — and across America — is written in that code.
Much more at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/grap...coronavirus-outbreak-iowa/?itid=hp-banner-low