I Am Diagnosed as a Medical Titan

Chapter 182: Chapter 136: A Very Lucky Genius (3)

「Ten minutes later.」

The state apparatus, at this moment, revealed its truly terrifying efficiency.

Yangcheng. The Pazhou Canton Fair Complex.

The background music in the bustling exhibition hall, once filled with a cacophony of different languages, was suddenly cut off by a public announcement.

”Emergency announcement. By order of the command headquarters, this exhibition hall will be under lockdown, effective immediately. All exhibitors, buyers, and staff, please remain at your current booths, wear a mask, and maintain a distance of one meter. Pandemic response personnel will be entering shortly to conduct temperature screenings and take throat swabs...”

The eight entrances and exits were immediately cordoned off with police tape.

At the same time, a web of red and blue police lights spread across the major thoroughfares of Yangcheng City.

In the command center of the Municipal Public Security Bureau, tens of thousands of glowing dots flickered across the main screen.

”Report! We have Wang Cuiping’s full movement history. The sub-district office and community committee have begun door-to-door screenings!”

”Sun Songyu’s movement history has been exported. We’ve located his close contacts. CDC transport vehicles are en route for pickup!”

”Report! We have the GPS data from the taxi of Lin Jingfeng, the driver who was stopped this morning. We are manually cross-referencing receipt stubs and intersection surveillance footage to track down his drop-off points and passengers!”

From the Provincial Public Security Department down to local police stations, from the Provincial Center for Disease Control to community health clinics.

A crisis in one area brings aid from all others.

Tracing, isolating, disinfecting.

Every potential hot zone was rapidly sanitized.

「2:00 PM.」

Provincial Health Department. The Minister’s office.

Lin Zhenhua leaned back in his chair, feeling a wave of exhaustion from the prolonged period of intense stress.

The red phone on his desk rang, and he picked it up.

”Old Lin, well done. Your preemptive order for a targeted lockdown was the right call. You’ve performed a great service this time.”

As the saying goes, making the right choice is far more important than simply working hard.

Lin Zhenhua had made one such right choice.

Listening to his superior’s praise, he didn’t become arrogant or take all the credit.

Instead, he said solemnly, ”Sir, without the conclusive sequencing evidence, I would never have dared to issue that order. The one who truly sounded the alarm was a student from Affiliated Hospital No. 1.”

”Oh?”

”Yes. His name is Jiang He. He borrowed a lab overnight and ran the complete viral gene sequence.”

”Jiang He...”

A similar scene also took place in the Capital City.

Inside Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Xu Wenpei received a call from Shu Yuelong.

”Old Xu, the ministry just commended our CDC’s reaction speed. If you hadn’t vouched for that report...”

”Don’t thank me. Thank Jiang He. The only reason we could confirm the new virus so quickly was all thanks to his sequencing data.”

From Yangcheng to the Capital City.

Every senior official and top expert involved...

When reporting to their superiors, they all tacitly mentioned the same name.

—Jiang He.

Although it wasn’t time to hand out accolades yet, this name was destined to leave an indelible mark.

「Time passed.」

While the world outside was turned upside down, Jiang He, at the eye of the storm, remained in a state of calm.

The central laboratory of the Cancer Research Institute at Affiliated Hospital No. 1.

Jiang He’s phone was on the lab bench, its screen lighting up from time to time.

Texts from Director Yang Xu, from Zhou Guanglin, and even one from Minister Lin’s secretary.

He saw them all. They were mostly just words of praise.

But after a glance, he turned the phone face down and silenced it.

’This is far from over.’

’When facing a highly contagious respiratory virus like this, humanity’s only ultimate weapon is a vaccine.’

’In my previous life, during the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, research institutions around the world collaborated. It took them a record-breaking 87 days to go from obtaining the viral strain to getting the first batch of vaccines approved for market.’

’87 days. That was an unbelievable miracle in medical history.’

’But in this life...’

’...with me here, it can be even faster.’

Conventional flu vaccine development is most time-consuming in the early stages: analyzing and screening viral antigens, and then constructing a seed strain suitable for high-titer cultivation in embryonated chicken eggs.

This usually takes several weeks or even months.

But Jiang He didn’t need to.

’Because in my mind, I have the most advanced vaccine development protocol from my past life.’

’I don’t have to wait for natural reassortment. I can go straight to reverse genetics.’

Jiang He turned and walked toward the laminar flow hood.

He took out the commonly used influenza virus backbone plasmid (PR8 strain) from the cold storage.

But at the moment he sat down to design the primers, Jiang He’s eyes flickered.

After a brief pause.

He deliberately ignored the GC content at the end of the HA and NA primer sequences and manually set the annealing temperature (Tm value) three degrees Celsius too low.

This was a classic, textbook rookie mistake back in 2008.

The result was obvious.

The first round of amplification failed.

Jiang He took a photo of this failed electrophoresis gel and saved it on the D drive of the lab computer.

He then created a folder named ”Redo - Primer Annealing Temp Estimation Error.”

’Clever Jiang, always planning his escape route.’

He could be a lucky genius, but he couldn’t be a god.

This useless gel image was his future get-out-of-jail-free card.

’A few days from now, when the top brass come to review my lab notes...’

’...they’ll see a passionate medical student who, exhausted after pulling an all-nighter, made a rookie mistake and miscalculated the annealing temperature.’

’He experienced failure, scratched his head while revising the parameters...’

’...and finally, with a bit of luck, stumbled his way to creating the correct viral strain.’

Camouflage complete.

Jiang He put on a new pair of gloves.

’The show’s over,’ he thought. ’Now... it’s time to actually save the world.’

He entered the perfect parameters from his memory back into the machine.

The very same strain construction that had taken the world’s top labs nearly a month in his past life...

...was now, following Jiang He’s fluid, practiced movements, taking shape at an unbelievable speed...