Scientists are using advanced genome sequencing technology to unravel the crisscrossing paths the new coronavirus took around the globe. They hope to better understand the spread of the virus and how to contain it.

A virus can replicate itself billions of times within an infected person’s body. Tiny genetic mutations arise in some of those replications and can eventually result in new families of the virus. Scientists can track the spread of the coronavirus by analyzing mutation patterns.

Despite the world changing drastically as the coronavirus has spread, my response has been mild. As a stay-at-home mom, I was accustomed to a lot of social isolation. I didn’t get annoyed when I wasn’t able to buy toilet paper, or when I had to alter my breakfast routine because the store was out of eggs, or when my nephew’s T-ball league was canceled. I took it all in stride until the first Sunday that I watched church online. 

That was when the reality of what was happening struck me. 

As the White House and state governments debate the best way to reopen the economy and relax social distancing guidelines, the need for more coronavirus testing keeps coming up.

“It can be extraordinarily helpful in terms of guiding our framework and indicators for reopening,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said this week about expanding his state’s testing capacity. “It’s not, at this moment, a panacea, but it could be profoundly significant.”

In the 1960s, scientists developed a vaccine to protect against RSV, a virus that causes pneumonia in infants. But it had severe, unintended results: The majority of the vaccinated babies who contracted the respiratory syncytial virus became even sicker, and two toddlers died.

Two reports in 2018 from U.S. Embassy officials in Beijing warned about risky coronavirus research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday. U.S. science diplomats visited the institute, where Chinese scientists studied bat coronaviruses to prevent future SARS-like outbreaks.

Fred Haise, now 86, said he will mark “boom day” on Monday, the day when an oxygen tank burst on the spacecraft carrying him and fellow astronauts Jim Lovell and Jack Swigert. Saturday is the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 13, a planned moon voyage that turned into a 200,000-mile rescue mission for the astronauts aboard the damaged craft. Mission Cmdr. Lovell, 92, said he considers himself lucky to have survived the trip and to have reached its golden anniversary. Swigert died in 1982.

In mid-February, doctors diagnosed 48-year-old Christine Rayburn from Olympia, Wash., with breast cancer that had already spread to her lymph nodes. Her doctor recommended immediate surgery to remove the tumor. But the hospital canceled the surgery as the COVID-19 outbreak ramped up in Seattle, just an hour north.