A Biogen employee
with symptoms of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, has been terminated
by the company after she left her home in Massachusetts and boarded a plane to China without disclosing her exposure to the virus.
According to reports, Jie Li, a Chinese citizen working for Biogen in
Massachusetts, up and left the country on March 12 without informing
the company during a period of time Biogen had issued a work-from-home order to its employees following a February management conference held in Boston that has been linked to more than 100 cases of COVID-19.
Li, the associate director of biostatistics for Biogen, did not attend
the conference that was held at a hotel in Boston, but had interacted
with those who did attend, according to reports. More than 100 people
who attended that conference have since been diagnosed with COVID-19.
Li and her family flew to China after being tested for the virus. It
is unknown if she knew the positive results of that test prior to her
abrupt departure. She flew from Boston to Los Angeles and from there to
China. Prior to the flight, according to The Belmontian, the
local paper for the town of Belmont, a Boston suburb, Li was
asymptomatic. However, during the flight to China, she began to show
symptoms of the virus. Once on the ground in China, she was tested again
by Chinese authorities, The Belmontian reported. Chinese media
though indicates that Li was actually showing symptoms of the
coronavirus prior to her flight. According to reports from that country,
as cited by MSN, Li had been taking antipyretics, drugs used
to prevent fever, before her flight “so as to not alert airline
officials measuring the body temperatures of passengers to screen for
possible coronavirus infections.”
Days before Li and her family left the United States for her native
China, Li had tested positive for COVID-19. Citing a March 19 statement
from Wesley Chin, director of the Belmont Health Department, The Belmontian
reported that Li had been tested by the state department of public
health. Although Chin made multiple attempts to reach out to Li about
her positive test results, he was never able to share them with her.
David Caouette, a spokesman for Cambridge, Mass.-based Biogen, told MSN
that the company did not know of her intention to leave the U.S. for
China. They did not know she had been gone until the Chinese media
reported the story. She was terminated by Biogen this week.
“We can confirm that Ms. Li was a U.S Biogen employee who made the
personal decision to travel to China without informing the company and
ignoring the guidance of health experts,” Caouette said in a statement issued to MSN Thursday. “We are deeply dismayed by the situation as reported by the media in China.”
Li is currently being treated in a Chinese hospital for COVID-19 and her husband has also tested positive.
It is unknown if Li intends to return to the United States. Although
she is native to China, Li spent a considerable number of years in the
United States, first earning her Ph.D. in statistics from the University
of Iowa. She worked for Biogen from 2015 to 2018. She left the company
only to return one year later.
https://www.biospace.com/article/biogen-employee-terminated-after-fleeing-to-china-while-sick-with-covid-19/
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