What Do You Do Once You've Discovered a New Virus?

What Do You Do Once You've Discovered a New Virus? (0:40)

Any new virus must be studied to identify how it's spread, who it affects and whether it has dangerous potential. In this video, HealthMaker Joe DeRisi, PhD describes the importance of large-scale experiments following the discovery of a new virus.

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With any new virus one has to ascertain what's the distribution of that virus, what's the real clinical burden, with respect to any particular location and it's not always clear those require such large scale epidemiology experiments, to understand who has seen the virus, who was infected with it, when do people get it? Do they get it as children? Do they get it as teenagers? That tells you a lot about how a virus might be spread and so those are the kinds of the studies that are on going for any kind of new virus.

So just because one can discover a new virus doesn't mean that instantly that has clinical relevance or that you can do something about it.