Judith Wasserheit

October 5, 2021

UW joins USAID’s $125M project to detect emerging viruses with pandemic potential

To better identify and prevent future pandemics, the University of Washington has become a partner in a five-year global, collaborative agreement with the U.S. Agency for International Development. The newly launched Discovery & Exploration of Emerging Pathogens – Viral Zoonoses, or DEEP VZN project, has approximately $125 million in anticipated funding and will be led by Washington State University. The effort will build scientific capacity in partner countries to safely detect and characterize viruses which have the potential to spill…

March 15, 2020

Why COVID-19 strategies built around the concept of ‘herd immunity’ are problematic

The idea of building herd immunity – increasing the number of infected to such a degree that naturally occurring immunity would outstrip the coronavirus, while isolating the elderly and others at greatest risk of the disease – has been tossed around in the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. This week, however, U.K. officials appear to be backing away from that approach. But the kind of “herd immunity” strategy being discussed in the U.K. does not acknowledge a critical…

March 11, 2020

Soundbites: UW experts respond to Gov. Inslee’s limits on crowd sizes

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee issued on Wednesday, March 11, an emergency proclamation that limits large events to minimize risks to public health during the COVID-19 outbreak. Here are how two UW experts responded to questions about the order.

February 7, 2020

Soundbites & B-roll: UW expert answers questions about the novel coronavirus pandemic

Dr. Judith Wasserheit, chair of the UW Department of Global Health in the School of Public Health and part of the UW MetaCenter for Pandemic Preparedness and Global Health Security, answers questions about the novel coronavirus outbreak, its spread, the level of concern and how to best protect yourself. For journalists Download soundbites and b-roll Forum: Coronavirus and Pandemic Disease Preparedness Join Dr. Judith Wasserheit and more than a dozen other UW School of Public Health, School of Medicine and…