Coronapod: Ramping up responses
Nature Podcast
podcast@nature.com
4.5 • 893 Ratings
🗓️ 3 April 2020
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Benjamin Thompson, Noah Baker, and Amy Maxmen discuss the latest on the British response, and what low- and middle-income countries have done to prepare for the pandemic.
In this episode:
01:33 Testing in the UK
This week, the UK health secretary announced plans to further ramp up testing for COVID-19, with the aim of preforming 100,000 tests a day in England by the end of April. We discuss these plans and why testing remains a key weapon in the fight against the virus.
11:37 Pandemic preparation in poorer countries
COVID-19 cases have started to be reported in many low- and middle-income countries. We hear how a few of these nations are preparing and what might happen if these efforts fail.
News article: How poorer countries are scrambling to prevent a coronavirus disaster
26:43 One good thing this week
As our hosts end another week of working from home, they pick out things they’ve seen that have made them smile in the last 7 days.
Video: Samuel L. Jackson reads Stay the F*** at home
Evening Standard: Medical fetish site says it's giving scrubs to NHS hospital amid coronavirus crisis
NPR: U.K. Family's Lockdown-Themed Rendition Of 'Les Mis' Is A Delight
Twitter: Patrick Stewart reads one of Shakespeare’s sonnets each day
28:54 The effect of the COVID-19 outbreak on research animals
With stay-at-home orders in effect in many parts of the world, scientists are making difficult decisions to safeguard the welfare of their lab animals. We hear from one researcher who plans to care for his fruit flies at home, and another who has had to euthanize many of the mouse colonies used in his institution’s research.
News: Cull, release or bring them home: Coronavirus crisis forces hard decisions for labs with animals
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to CoronaPod. In this show, we're going to bring you nature's take on the latest COVID-19 developments. |
| 0:09.1 | And we'll be speaking to experts around the world about research during the pandemic. |
| 0:15.4 | I really don't know how this plays out. We also don't know a ton about this, you know, virus. So there's so many open |
| 0:21.0 | questions. I just have a really hard time making predictions because I don't know how the outbreak's |
| 0:25.6 | going to change. Hi, I'm Benjamin Thompson. Welcome to episode three of CoronaPod. I'm still |
| 0:35.2 | here in my South London basement and I'm joined on the line by Noah |
| 0:38.4 | Baker and Amy Maxman. Noah, how are you doing first of all? Not bad. I like that the beginning |
| 0:43.6 | of Corona Pod, we hear about your basement. It's nice to know what's going on in the basement |
| 0:47.4 | in South London. And Amy, how about you? You're in California, right? Hi, I'm good. Today again is not the day that I'm going to use video. So for the sake of the listeners then, I should just say that Noah, you and I are on a video chat right now, so we can see inside each other's homemade studios. But Amy, for the third week in a row, you've decided to go audio only, so you can see us, but we can't see you. |
| 1:10.0 | Not only am I like looking like a mess, but my house is also a little messy. |
| 1:16.3 | You know, next, it's all about next time maybe. |
| 1:18.8 | That's why we're really in these booths just to hide our messy houses. |
| 1:25.1 | I mean, I can't see the background of your house, but yeah, you do seem to live in some sort of life comfort or pillow situation. |
| 1:32.9 | So Ben and I have just been tuned into a news conference by the UK's health secretary, Matt Hancock. |
| 1:39.3 | He himself is fresh out of quarantine because he previously tested positive for COVID-19. And in this conference, |
| 1:46.0 | he's laid out the latest grand plan about how the UK is going to respond. In particular, |
| 1:52.1 | he referenced testing a lot. He's come out today with really kind of, I think, his five pillars, |
| 1:57.6 | he mentioned about, you know, what we're going to do to try and get testing, |
| 2:01.3 | well, testing levels up. I think currently only a few thousand NHS frontline workers have |
| 2:05.0 | been testing. I think he's talking about getting that up to, what, is it, 100,000 no, |
| 2:08.5 | by the end of the month, something like that? 100,000 is the goal. Exactly how they're distributed |
| 2:13.7 | is a question that we are exactly not sure the answer to yet, but there is a whole, |
... |
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