Apoorva Mandavilli
Apoorva Mandavilli covers the collision of infectious disease science, vaccine policy and public health agencies for The New York Times. She reports on science and global health, with a steady focus on infectious diseases and pandemics and the institutions that try to manage them. Her work sits at the point where research findings, regulatory decisions and political fights shape how outbreaks are handled and how vaccines reach the public.
Infectious Diseases and Outbreak Response
Mandavilli writes mainly about infectious diseases such as Covid-19, mpox, H.I.V., malaria and tuberculosis, treating them as ongoing global threats rather than one-off events.
She has covered landmark developments in H.I.V. treatment, including reporting on the “London patient,” the second person cured of H.I.V., and later telling his story once he revealed his identity. During the coronavirus pandemic, she has explained how the virus spreads, including reporting on the claim by 239 experts that the coronavirus is airborne and what that means for public health guidance. She also follows less familiar pathogens, as in coverage of a woman ordered to remain in hantavirus quarantine despite differing recommendations from federal health authorities, showing how rare infections still test public health systems and individual rights.
Across these stories, she turns complex epidemiology and virology into clear narratives about risks, evidence and the practical consequences of scientific decisions.
Vaccines, Policy and the Courts
Mandavilli repeatedly returns to vaccine policy and the way law and politics reshape immunization schedules and access. She has reported on a federal judge striking down vaccine policies advanced by Robert F.
Kennedy Jr., detailing how the ruling dismantled a series of decisions on childhood and Covid vaccines. She has covered medical groups suing to block revised childhood vaccine recommendations, showing how professional organizations use the courts to challenge federal health guidance they view as unsafe or unsupported by evidence. In another line of coverage, she has reported on a coalition of 15 states suing the Department of Health and Human Services over changes to the national vaccine schedule, again framing vaccines as a legal and political battleground as much as a scientific one.
Mandavilli also tracks disputes over the evidence base, including an article on the C.D.C. canceling publication of a study showing benefits of Covid vaccines, and what that decision means for public trust in public health data.
Her work on claims that childhood vaccines “overload” the immune system addresses misinformation directly, explaining why those fears are not supported by immunology and long-term safety data. She follows the consequences of these debates into the military, reporting on Kennedy hiring an Army doctor who opposed Covid shots to investigate unproven claims that vaccines killed thousands of troops. Taken together, her vaccine coverage maps the full chain from scientific findings to agency decisions, legal challenges and public perception.
Global Health Programs and Inequity
Beyond U.S. vaccine fights, Mandavilli reports on how funding decisions and policy shifts alter global health programs and who receives care.
She has covered former officials protesting a plan to defund the Pan American Health Organization, showing how cuts to international agencies can increase vulnerability to infectious disease threats. Her reporting on the closure of 1,700 H.I.V. treatment sites after aid reductions details how children and high‑risk adults lose access to lifesaving drugs when global programs are scaled back.
In other work, she has examined a sharp rise in uninsured patients following changes linked to Obamacare cuts, connecting health policy to hospital strain and gaps in care. She has also written about a lifesaving genetics tool that works best if you are white, explaining how biases in data and technology can deepen inequities in diagnosis and treatment.
Across these stories, Mandavilli treats global health as a system of programs, budgets and technologies that either narrow or widen disparities in who benefits from medical advances.
Background in Science Journalism
Mandavilli brings a long science‑journalism career to her current reporting on health and global disease. Before joining The New York Times, she was the founding editor in chief of Spectrum, an award‑winning news site focused on autism science that she led for more than a decade. Her work has appeared in outlets including The Atlantic, Slate and The New Yorker online, and in the anthology “Best American Science and Nature Writing,” reflecting a broad portfolio across science and health topics.
She has received multiple honors, including sharing in The Times’s 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for pandemic coverage and winning the 2019 Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting. She also co‑founded Culture Dish, an organization aimed at increasing diversity in science journalism, and helped build structures for inclusion within the science‑writing community.
This background in specialized science reporting informs her current beat, where she consistently ties rigorous research and policy detail to clear, accessible coverage of infectious diseases and global health.
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