More than a year after Biogen held multi-day management meetings that became a global superspreader event in the COVID-19 pandemic, newly released emails show the extent of the fear and confusion among the drug makers' employees in those early days, as testing shortages, miscommunication from the state and changing guidance from health care professionals plagued the response.
The emails also show that state public health officials discussed the probability of community transmission days before acknowledging it publicly.
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The Boston Business Journal obtained the emails from the Department of Public Health through a public records request. Department of Public Health officials provided the emails after a formal request and repeated prodding. The first batch of emails, which have been redacted, were released last September, and the second batch was not released until this week.
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The meetings, held at the Cambridge Marriott and the Boston Marriott Long Wharf in late February 2020, gave rise to as many as 300,000 cases worldwide, according to a study in the journal, Science.
