WVU in the News: MCHD epidemiologist Dr. Diane Gross was on front lines of Ebola outbreak
Every morning for the past several weeks, Dr. Diane K. Gross helps kick off Monongalia County Health Department’s daily briefing by updating staff on the region’s number of COVID-19 cases and providing analysis.
She spends her day helping her health department colleagues track down and isolate those who have tested positive for the illness, as well as quarantine any contacts they might have had while sick. She arrives early and is usually the last employee to depart, seven days a week, leaving in time to take her dogs for a walk before spending her evening working from home.
This is not the first time that Gross, a Morgantown native and MCHD’s regional epidemiologist, has responded to a pandemic. As a senior epidemiologist in High Threat Pathogens for the World Health Organization (WHO), she spent nearly two months in the West African country of Sierra Leone in 2015 during the Ebola outbreak there.
Gross also serves as an associate professor in the WVU School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology.
Photo: The Dominion Post