MLVA Analysis

Allison dives into the Lovelace labs and starts asking some questions. After securing an interview with the Director, he assures you that there has been no recent Y. pestis work. “We do keep it here, but it’s kept on liquid nitrogen and hasn’t been accessed in some times.” Indeed, the logs don’t seem to indicate that any vials are missing. “Is there a way we can verify that they really aren’t to blame,” wonders your Director. You set off to think about that.

Alexandre gets into the mechanism for patient response. Proper precautions are now being taken for all of the patients and their close contacts. Fortunately there have not been other cases as secondary infections that have emerged. Every health district is on high alert though.

Kelly asks some questions about bubonic plague, which has been ruled out. That said, there are some interesting questions that were asked, one of them which asks “where did the patients go?” Emily proceeds with asking some more kinds of questions and has thought about a questionairre.

Your assistant helps put the information together. “Together, this should provide us with plenty of information,” says your Director. “Let’s take a look.” As you take a look at the overall results of the surveys, you see a commonality – all of the patients have recently traveled to Albuquerque over the previous weekend, January 15-17th, 2020. Questioning them on why that particular weekend, all of the patients indicate that they had attended the annual Albuquerque Comicon. There doesn’t seem to be any link to an animal exposure, or bites, etc. “The ramifications of this seem obvious. Are we the epicenter of this ourbreak?” asks your Director. “How could this have happened?”

Ed did some work looking at a map and thinking about flights. He showed that the airport is a hub between the coasts. Definitely some good work.

Ed also asks for MLVA analysis of the patients and to compare them with the lab. A panel is run and the outcome is shown.

From the plague patients from New Mexico, New Jersey, and New York, four strains emerged. Use the French website from class to analyze them.
7 6 3 7 22 15 8
7 6 3 7 -1 16 8
7 6 4 7 13 15 9
7 6 3 7 -1 12 8

The MLVA from the liquid nitrogen tank at Lovelace on the Kirtland Airforce base has the following:
8 8 8 9 5 7 6

“What can we do with this data?” asks the Director.

It looks like you have some more investigating ahead to do. What do you want to look into next?

1 page, reference include if possible. THIS IS A PROCESS ASSIGNMENT ABOUT PLAGUE. AFTER READING THE WHOLE CONTEXT, WHAT IS THE BEST THINGS NEXT TO DO IN THAT SITUATION.

DEADLINE IS 5PM TODAY