Myron Cohen, MD, and several colleagues in the division of infectious diseases and the UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, were featured in this in-depth “Time and Tenacity” Endeavors magazine article on HIV and COVID-19 research.
Since HIV became a pandemic, more than 75 million people have been infected with the virus and about 32 million have died from AIDS, according to the World Health Organization. Thirty-eight million people are still infected worldwide.
Today, HIV researchers have another nasty virus to contend with: SARS-CoV-2. To date, nearly 12 million people have been diagnosed with COVID-19, half a million people have died worldwide, and one-quarter of those deaths have been in the United States.
But there is much hope — in part, thanks to Carolina’s prowess in the field of HIV.
“Virtually every HIV expert on this campus has been assigned or repurposed, in one way or another, to work on COVID-19,” Cohen says, “because they are able to deal with emerging pathogens after dealing with HIV for 30 to 40 years.”
Read the whole story at endeavors.unc.edu.