News & Events
University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine
• KSNV 3 News NBC Las Vegas
“The biology of all the infectious diseases and the public health aspect of it has taught us that this is the absolute worst time to take the gas pedal off anything,” said Dr. Mark Pandori with the Nevada State Public Health Lab.
• Las Vegas Sun
“This is the absolute worst time to take your foot off the pedal for anything,” said Dr. Mark Pandori, director of the Nevada State Laboratory.
• U.S. News & World Report
“This is the absolute worst time to take your foot off the pedal for anything,” said Dr. Mark Pandori, director of the Nevada State Laboratory.
• Reno Gazette Journal
Pandori, who leads the Nevada State Laboratory on the University of Nevada, Reno campus, is almost as new to Nevada as the virus. He jumped into the role in November 2019 and today, over a year later, is brutally skeptical about the future — and the eradication of COVID-19. “This pandemic isn’t going to one day just disappear,” he said, despite the miraculous speed of two vaccines and the hope they control the spread. Pandori is part mad scientist, in the best sense of the description. What he says is often gospel to the likes of Gov. Steve Sisolak and Washoe County Health District Officer Kevin Dick.
• KUNR
This week marks a year since the first presumptive positive COVID-19 case was announced in Nevada. Since then, Nevadans have endured the upheaval the pandemic has caused in their lives. isten to “A Year In The Pandemic,” a one-hour special hosted by KUNR's Anh Gray and Lucia Starbuck. This KUNR special first aired on Wednesday, March 3. Dr. Mark Pandori, director, Nevada State Public Health Laboratory can be heard from minutes 38 - 41 in the segment.
• Reno Gazette Journal
"Testing sites may change, but labs will remain in a prepared state in case they are required for another surge," said Dr. Mark Pandori, Director of the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory, when asked if testing sites would be scaled down.
• Las Vegas Review Journal
The director of Nevada’s public health lab isn’t too worried yet about a new pair of coronavirus variants first detected in California, despite one researcher there stating that “the devil is here” following the discovery.
• High Country News
Project ECHO specialists in Reno, Nevada, for example, helped mental health professionals diagnose behavioral health conditions and treat patients with schizophrenia across the state. “(It’s) really about identifying those people early on and getting them to these services quickly,” Troy Jorgensen, program manager of Project ECHO Nevada, told me.
• KUNR
The Nevada State Public Health Laboratory confirmed the existence of the B-1-3-5-1 strain in Washoe County, Thursday, Feb. 18. According to lab director Dr. Mark Pandori, the sample was traced to a person who traveled from South Africa and began showing symptoms after arriving in Reno. He saids the new strain underlines the continued need to keep the virus in check. "If we allow variants to come out, and then those variants to variate and change on themselves, we are going to potentially be in a situation where we are facing a whole new foe."
• KNPR
Dr. Pandori compared that to the UK variant, which doesn't produce more virus, but on a per-virus-particle basis, is more infectious. "There's a quality and a quantity concept," he said, "You can be more infectious because the viruses themselves are more infectious, or you can be more infectious because you're shedding more virus."
• Northern Nevada Business Weekly
Gayle Halminiak and Jennie Parker recently accepted leadership positions with University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine (UNR Med) and University Health.
• U.S. News & World Report
The Nevada State Public Health Laboratory said Thursday that the mutated version of the virus was confirmed a day earlier in a sample traced to a person who traveled from South Africa and began showing symptoms of COVID-19 when arriving in Reno.
• Northern Nevada Business Weekly
Stephanie McCurry-Tenney, office manager and events coordinator of the Sanford Center for Aging — part of the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine — was recently elected president of the Reno-Sparks Branch of the NAACP, effective Feb. 3.
• Elko Daily Free Press
The Nevada State Public Health Laboratory said Thursday that the mutated version of the virus was confirmed a day earlier in a sample traced to a person who traveled from South Africa and began showing symptoms of COVID-19 when arriving in Reno.
• KTVN Channel 2 News
The Nevada State Public Health Laboratory said Thursday that the mutated version of the virus was confirmed a day earlier in a sample traced to a person who traveled from South Africa and began showing symptoms of COVID-19 when arriving in Reno.
• This is Reno
NSPHL Director Mark Pandori said the lab detected the case as part of its daily strain testing and sequencing program. He said sequencing on the sample was performed twice to confirm the variant. The B.1.351 strain was traced back to a person who traveled to South Africa and became symptomatic after arriving back in Reno.
• KLAS 8 News Now Las Vegas
Nevada has its first confirmed case of South African B.1.351 COVID-19 variant, according to state health officials. The Nevada State Public Health Laboratory and the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine said the case was found in sample collected in Reno and confirmed as the variant on Wednesday, Feb. 17.
• Reno Gazette Journal
It’s official: the South African variant of COVID-19 has reached Reno. The arrival of the COVID-19 B1.351 strain was confirmed on Thursday by health officials — the first known case of the virus in Nevada. It is also the latest COVID variant to reach the state, which saw its first case of the U.K. variant in Las Vegas back in January. The variant was detected during routine testing and sequencing, said Dr. Mark Pandori, director of the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory. The specimen was first sequenced on Feb. 13 and confirmed in the lab by Wednesday.
• KOLO Channel 8 News
The Nevada State Public Health Lab has confirmed the first case of the South African variant of COVID-19 in the area. The new strain was detected in a sample collected in Reno. The NSPHL sequenced the specimen on Saturday, Feb. 13, and through further analyzation of the data that detected the B.1.351 strain, confirmed it as the South African variant on Wednesday, Feb. 17.
• KVVU-TV Fox 5 Las Vegas
Dr. Mark Pandori of the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory explained that the more the virus spreads, the more mutations will develop. "That's yet another reason we need to do all these things: to keep people healthy, but keep 'this' from becoming 'something else,'" Pandori said. "That variation is what leads a virus from becoming a bad situation to a worse situation. If we let this thing creep around ever more, we're going to see more variation," Pandori said.
• KSNV-TV NBC 3 News Las Vegas
Dr. Mark Pandori calls the U.K. variant "concerning" for its faster spreading abilities, but data from Moderna and Pfizer show these vaccines are still effective against it.
• Advisory Board
Mark Pandori, director of Nevada's public health lab, told KHN, "I predict that we are missing cases of reinfection," adding, "They are very difficult to ascertain, so you need specialized teams to do that work, or a core lab."
• Nevada Business Magazine
The board will also welcome Seema Donahoe, creative director at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine and Allison Williams, APR, specialist, communications writer at the University of Nevada Reno as new members.
• EIN Presswire
Having held leadership positions everywhere from Johns Hopkins to UC-Davis to his current position of Director of the Communication Science Program in the Department of Physiology and Cell Biology at the University of Nevada-Reno School of Medicine, Dr. Ebenezer N. Yamoah knows a few things about running a productive research group.
• Reno Gazette Journal
Integrated academic health systems bring together three complimentary initiatives — patient care, research and medical education — and meld them into a single mission, each enhancing the others synergistically. The University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine (UNR Med) and Renown Health are actively exploring the creation of such a health system.
