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With over 500,000 unknown viruses circulating in wildlife capable of being transmitted to people, current public health surveillance systems that rely on symptomatic patients are not enough to effectively deal with novel virus outbreaks. In order to better understand and stop the transmission of this virus and prevent a crisis from happening again, we launched Chicago CAN. It was six weeks before the first instance of community spread was identified, but by then it was too late to prevent localized outbreaks from exploding into the devastating health, economic, and social impacts that we are experiencing today. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, circulated in the United States for weeks before it was detected.
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Connecting scientific research with public health to address the COVID-19 pandemic Walder Foundation is committed to helping the Chicago, Cook County and Illinois public health departments better understand the transmission of the virus so that we might safely reopen our communities and prevent a crisis like the one we are experiencing from happening again.