MJH Hosts Free Webinar on Emerging COVID-19 Variants

Emerging coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) variants B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 will be the topic of a free MJH Life Sciences webinar at 6 p.m. EST on January 26, 2020.

These emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants, some billed as more contagious than the original virus, have dominated reports since they began to pop up across the globe within the last couple months. B.1.1.7 was first identified in the United Kingdom in September 2020 and B.1.351 was first identified in South Africa in October 2020.

How did these variants emerge? Are they indeed more transmissible? Do they cause more serious disease? What does the scientific evidence support?

Those questions and more will be addressed during the live, one-hour session featuring a panel of frontline experts, including a virologist, an epidemiologist, and an immunologist.

Click here to register for the free event.

The panel for this webinar features:

• Angela Rasmussen, PhD, associate research scientist, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, is a virologist studying host responses to infection by combining classical virology with a modern systems biology approach. Her research focuses on identifying host response signatures predictive of infection severity or disease outcome and host pathways to target drug development or repurposing.
• Saskia Popescu, PhD, MPH, MA, CIC, is an infectious disease epidemiologist and infection preventionist with a focus on hospital biopreparedness.
• Adam S. Lauring, MD, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Departments of Internal Medicine (Division of Infectious Diseases), Microbiology and Immunology, and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan. The majority of his work is devoted to conducting basic and translational research on RNA virus evolution.