When the phone calls began rushing in about a mysterious virus leaving people breathless in a city in China, Sharon Lewin felt a familiar pang of adrenaline. | MeljCunningham
, who saved countless lives by increasing access to anti-retroviral therapy for millions of people infected with HIV in poverty-stricken countries.
How did she cope? At the beginning, it was just the bare bones of survival, she tells me. Days stretched from 6am until late in the evening. Lewin slept for a few hours before waking to overseas phone calls at 3 or 4am. Mornings were filled with Doherty Institute briefings to discuss the latest science. Then it was on to media requests and an endless blur of Zoom meetings.Luis Enrique Ascui
Lively Friday night family dinners have been a lifelong tradition for Lewin, who is Jewish. But during lockdowns the ritual morphed into a rare moment of solace with her husband Robert and their two sons, Max, 25, and Alex, 28, who were both still living at home. She runs to quieten her mind. During all six lockdowns, she regularly ran five kilometres along a familiar route of deserted streets near her home. Those 30 minutes were spent listening to a podcast, eitherPre-pandemic, Lewin spent much of the year travelling the world, working to find a cure for HIV.
A naturally curious child, Lewin excelled at maths, physics and chemistry. She dreamt of being an astronaut or an engineer but was strongly encouraged by her parents to study medicine at Monash University. Tens of thousands of new cases and dozens of deaths are still being reported every day in Australia. Once a global leader in preventing COVID-19 deaths, Lewin warns Australia is falling behind in its ability to monitor the virus.long COVID” to understand the mechanisms of the perplexing, post-viral syndromeShe fears not enough is being done to generate awareness about life-saving antiviral drugs to limit the impact of COVID-19, which often need to be taken within five days of symptoms.
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