The Coronavirus Hunter Is Racing for Answers in a Locked-Down Lab
A University of North Carolina scientist who has been chasing viruses for decades may hold the key to a cure.
The deadly coronavirus arrived by courier on Feb. 6, delivered to a windowless air-locked laboratory in a secret location on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus. It came sealed in two 500-microliter vials, wrapped inside plastic pouches, placed inside a third sealed plastic container, all packed with dry ice.
A team of scientists — protected head-to-toe by Tyvek body suits with battery-powered respirators — opened the vials, got down to work and haven’t stopped since. Members of an elite lab of virologists at the university’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, their mission is to come up with a drug to treat the pathogen that has already infected over 90,000 people and killed more than 3,000.