Helen Branswell is a Canadian infectious diseases and global health reporter at Stat News.
[1] Branswell spent fifteen years as a medical reporter at The Canadian Press, where she led coverage of the Ebola, Zika, SARS and swine flu pandemics.
And somebody said, “What can you do?” And I said, “I think I can write.” And so, I started freelancing for the local paper in the small town I lived in at the time in Eastern Canada at $15 a story.
Branswell is a popular science communicator; she was often recommended as an important health journalist to follow on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic.
She remarked that, for the scientific community, this virus was different to other pandemics, because the rise of preprint serves meant that journalists and the public had access to data and research much faster than before.
She questioned why Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control, was so silent throughout the outbreak, whereas they provided regular briefings during the 2009 swine flu pandemic.