![]() ![]() And I think there is nothing else that matters here. They started to test before the virus had arrived. “Basically, the authorities in Iceland prepared for it. “The entire world knew that there was an epidemic mounting in China in January,” he said. Stefánsson said an early, aggressive response to the Covid-19 outbreak is more important in limiting its spread than overall population or population density. “So this is all a question of the will, the desire, the determination, to do this properly and my guess is to do that, there needs to be some sort of a central control,” he said. has probably “5,000 times more resources” than Iceland. You could have the universities do the analysis of the data and help with planning how to deal with it.”ĭespite having far more people, Stefánsson suggested the U.S. “You could have the universities do the testing. He has also served as Chief Compliance and Data Protection Officer at various times during his tenure at the company. “You have all of this talent, all of this equipment in your universities, that could simply be drafted to apply to this epidemic,” he said. Jóhann Hjartarson has been the General Counsel of deCODE genetics since 1998. is a vital weapon in the battle against Covid-19. ![]() Stefánsson said the strong academic system in the U.S. “By doing this, we seemed to have brought this epidemic under some sort of control,” he argued. Those who came into contact with an infected person are put in quarantine, he said. This involves putting everyone who tested positive in isolation and then determining all the people who have been in contact with people who have the disease, he explained. Stefánsson, a neurologist who was formerly a professor at Harvard University, said that in addition to an early commitment to widespread testing, Iceland’s government also deployed “an extraordinarily vigorous” system of contact tracing. ![]() In the U.S., where about 3.2 million people have been tested for the disease, there are more than 634,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19, per JHU data. Iceland has 1,727 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and eight deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. “If you were to bring this all to bare, you would easily be able to do the same thing as we.” “It ought to be even easier in a country of your size with your resources, with this incredible amount of talent you have,” Stefánsson said of the U.S. ![]() Census Bureau.īut Iceland’s ability to test around 10% of its population and deploy robust contact tracing when someone is diagnosed with Covid-19 should not be seen as something only small countries can do, Stefánsson argued in an interview with CNBC’s Meg Tirrell. has about 330 million people while Iceland has just about 347,000, according to the U.S. Stefánsson, whose Reykjavík-based company is known for its work analyzing the human genome, noted the obvious size differences between the U.S. He holds Iceland’s highest honor, the Order of the Falcon, and in 2019 was elected the first president of the Nordic Society of Human Genetics and Precision Medicine.Iceland’s strategy to track the spread of the coronavirus can be used in the U.S., deCODE Genetics CEO Kári Stefánsson told CNBC on Wednesday. His work has been recognized by major international publications and bodies including Time, Newsweek, Forbes, BusinessWeek and the World Economic Forum. Stefansson has received some of the highest honors in biomedical research and genetics, including the including the Sackler Lecture at MIT, the European Society of Human Genetics Award, the Anders Jahre Award, the American Alzheimer’s Association’s Inge Grundke-Iqbal Award, the Federation of European Biomedical Societies’ Sir Hans Krebs Medal, and the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) William Allan Award. Prior to founding deCODE in 1996 he was professor of neurology, neuropathology and neuroscience at Harvard and had previously held faculty positions in neurology, neuropathology and neurosciences at the University of Chicago, from 1983-1993.ĭr. The population approach he has advanced in Iceland has served as the model for national genome projects around the world and contributed to the realization of several aspects of precision medicine, including to the discovery and development of therapeutic targets and compounds for Amgen. His work, published in more than 600 scientific papers, has focused on how genomic diversity is generated and on the discovery of sequence variants impacting susceptibility to common diseases. In Iceland he has pioneered the use of population-scale genetics to understand variation in the sequence of the human genome. is founder and CEO of Reykjavik-based deCODE genetics. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |