In a typical year, several thousand samples from flu patients around the world arrive at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They’re crucial for understanding the virus’s evolution and help form the bedrock of the World Health Organization’s effort to design the next annual flu shot.
But this year, the flow of that data has come “pretty much to a grinding halt,” says Demetre Daskalakis, who led the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at CDC until he resigned in August.