404 - How Colombia Weathered One of the World's Most Severe COVID-19 Outbreaks
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 3 December 2021
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Throughout the pandemic, Colombia has fared better than other South American countries in terms of hospital overload and deaths, due in no small part to its emphasis on testing, contact tracing, and isolating of positive and suspected cases. Hopkins health economist Dr. Antonio Trujillo talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about Colombia's pandemic strategies, and his research calculating the ROI of testing, tracing, and isolating both in terms of dollars and lives saved.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 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 jh.edu. |
| 0:40.4 | That's public health question at jhh.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:46.6 | Today, our topic is Colombia, the South American country that has weathered one of the |
| 0:51.8 | world's most severe COVID-19 outbreaks. |
| 0:55.0 | I speak to Professor Antonio Trujillo of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 1:01.0 | A health economist, Dr. Trujillo, has recently published an article in Lancet Regional Health Americas |
| 1:08.0 | about the value of testing, tracing, and isolating individuals with COVID |
| 1:13.6 | as part of Colombia's response to the pandemic. Let's listen. |
| 1:19.6 | Dr. Antonio Trujillo, thank you so much for joining me on Public Health On Call. |
| 1:24.3 | How long have you been working with the government of Columbia to combat COVID? |
| 1:29.6 | Thank you, Dr. Charleston, for inviting me to your podcast. I've been assisting the government |
| 1:34.7 | of Colombia for the past 18 months, mostly in the design and implementation of policy to combat |
| 1:40.8 | COVID-19. What's the situation right now in Colombia? Well, the cumulative situation is that |
| 1:47.5 | we have 5 million cases, 120,000 deaths. It's a higher death rate around 2,000 per million. |
| 1:56.1 | The situation now is that we have around 2,000 cases, which is 5 per 100, which is low. It's an endemic, not a pandemic. But the forecast |
| 2:06.0 | is that these numbers will go up and the government need to be ready for the new peak. |
| 2:12.5 | What's the situation with vaccination now? |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.