Farah Stockman and Kim Barker, writing for The New York Times, report to biotech Biogen – which has a huge presence in Research Triangle Park – became a “super spreader” of the COVID-19 virus that’s still wreaking havoc across the United States and parts of the world.
The two cited a Biogen leadership meeting in Boston that became a “superspreading” event from which company execs “carried the virus to at least six states, the District of Columbia and three countries, outstripping the ability of local public health officials to trace the spread.”
Biogen employees were among the first known cases in North Carolina.
“Unlike the most infamous clusters of cases stemming from a nursing home outside Seattle or a 40th birthday party in Connecticut, the Biogen cluster happened at a meeting of top health care professionals whose job it was to fight disease, not spread it,” The Times reports.
“The official count of those sickened— 99, including employees and their contacts, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health — includes only those who live in that state. The true number across the United States is certainly higher. The first two cases in Indiana were Biogen executives. So was the first known case in Tennessee, and six of the earliest cases in North Carolina.”
