355 - COVID-19 in the Land Down Under
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 6 August 2021
⏱️ 17 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
In the early days of the pandemic, Australia kept COVID cases low by closing its borders and instituting rigorous public health measures like contact tracing. Now, however, low vaccination rates and the delta variant have forced communities back into lockdown. Dr. Patricia Davidson, vice chancellor of the University of Wollongong—and former dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing—talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about the COVID-19 experience of Australia, how it is similar in some respects and different in others from that of the US.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 4 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former Commissioner of Health in Baltimore City. |
| 0:20.0 | Our goal is to bring |
| 0:21.7 | scientific evidence and experience to current topics in public health through engaging interviews |
| 0:27.1 | with scientists, community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. |
| 0:32.8 | If you have ideas or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question at jhh.edu. |
| 0:39.9 | That's public health question at jh.h.u.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:45.8 | Today, I speak to Patricia Davidson, the vice chancellor of the University of Olongong |
| 0:52.2 | in Australia. Our topic is the recent COVID surge affecting her nation. |
| 0:59.0 | Full disclosure, Dr. Davidson recently served as the Dean |
| 1:03.0 | of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. |
| 1:06.0 | So it was really great to catch up with her. |
| 1:09.0 | Let's listen. |
| 1:10.9 | Patricia Davidson, I am so happy to see you, first of all, |
| 1:16.2 | on Zoom, and grateful for joining Public Health on Call. |
| 1:19.8 | How are you doing in Australia these days? |
| 1:23.5 | Well, you know, it's great to be back home in Australia. |
| 1:27.2 | I really miss the United States, and particularly Hopkins. But Josh, to be honest, I find myself in a bit of groundhog day as the pandemic sort of starts to gear up in Australia. |
| 1:39.8 | Yeah, so you were here in Baltimore with us for most of the pandemic. You've just been in Australia for a couple months now? |
| 1:47.2 | Yeah, just almost three months. |
| 1:50.0 | So, you know, I came back to relishing being out and about and no masks. |
| 1:56.2 | But, you know, I found myself, we're in New South Wales, in our third week of lockdown, |
... |
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