ABOVE: COURTESY BIOGEN
In late February, as the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in the US, the biotech company Biogen became an unwitting superspreader. More than 100 Biogen leaders and executives had attended a leadership meeting in Massachusetts on February 26 and 27. When the executives flew home—to Europe, Asia, and across the US—they spread SARS-CoV-2 to their families and coworkers, seeding new outbreaks. According to the official count, 99 people living in Massachusetts alone were infected with SARS-CoV-2 as a result of the Biogen meeting. The total number of people infected in the US and around the world is higher.
The company chose to capitalize on its early COVID-19 misfortune by helping others with their research. “Several Biogen employees, who at the time were still recovering from COVID-19, began to consider ways they could offer their own anonymized medical information to research efforts,” explains Maha Radhakrishnan, the chief ...
