A disease detective on the frontlines of WHO’s Covid-19 response – STAT

People who know Maria Van Kerkhove describe her as someone who has worked her whole life to be in this place, at this moment.
This place is at the core of the World Health Organizations coronavirus team, this moment is when the WHO is trying to steer the globes response to the Covid-19 pandemic. No one would expect such a job to be anything less than highly stressful, but lately, the ride has been a rocky one.
Van Kerkhove, who for months has joined Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus during regular press briefings, found herself in a firestorm last month after saying that people with Covid-19 who are asymptomatic very rarely transmit the infection.
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The agencys pandemic response team, which Van Kerkhove helps lead as the head of the WHOs emerging diseases unit, came under fire again this week when more than 200 scientists accused the WHO in an open letter of resisting evidence that virus-laced aerosols emitted by people infected with Covid-19  are fueling spread of the disease.
While the latter critique was aimed broadly at the WHO, Van Kerkhove was personally in the hot seat in the case of the earlier controversy. At the time, she was speaking about people who never develop symptoms. But asymptomatic is also a term sometimes used to describe people who are infected and who havent yet developed symptoms. Its been established those people can and do transmit the infection.
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Covid-19 Twitter erupted after Van Kerkhoves remarks. The following day, she and Mike Ryan, the head of the WHOs health emergencies program, turned to Facebook Live to clarify the comments.
She should have recognized thats how it would get interpreted, Ashish Jha, director of Harvards Global Health Institute, said a couple of days later. Even the next days walk-back I just dont think they clarified it well enough.
Van Kerkhove, who strives for precision in her Covid-19 messaging, is still bruised by the episode.
I was talking with my husband

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