Coronavirus: Athletes and teachers
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2022
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The vaccination and visa controversy around Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open tournament has made global headlines all week. It has also put focus on how sports around the world deal with vaccines in this pandemic.
Professional athletes often follow a rigorous diet and training schedule to achieve optimum fitness. Not surprisingly, athletes care about what they put in their bodies and in some cases they are delaying or avoiding getting a jab against Covid-19.
To discuss how this is playing out in different sports, host James Reynolds brings together an American professional basketball player, currently competing in Istanbul, a sports physician in Mumbai, India and a sports writer in the US. They discuss how the stance of the men's world number one tennis player and other sports stars is having an impact and what might be done to offer reassurance around Covid vaccines.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm James Reynolds on the BBC World Service, and this is BBC OS Conversations on |
| 0:05.1 | Coronavirus, Athletes and Teachers. |
| 0:11.8 | We want to discuss a couple of things. One is sports stars and vaccination. The other is the |
| 0:17.0 | impact of the pandemic in schools, as the debate continues in several countries around teaching |
| 0:21.9 | online instead of face-to-face. It was a sea of black squares. Students are quite nervous, |
| 0:27.7 | or at least they were in the beginning to have their faces up. They didn't want their cameras on |
| 0:32.5 | and they didn't want their mics on. So sometimes I would be talking to myself, talking to the laptop |
| 0:37.5 | and looking for some kind of response. |
| 0:42.7 | I have spent several hours every day this week trying to keep up with the developments around |
| 0:49.2 | the tennis star Novak Djokovic and his visa and vaccine controversy in Melbourne ahead of the |
| 0:54.5 | Australian Open Championship. Whilst he has never supported claims that vaccines are harmful, |
| 1:00.3 | we have learned from the world number one that he is unvaccinated and was given a medical |
| 1:04.9 | exemption to enter the country based on a positive COVID test in mid-December. |
| 1:09.6 | After that, as you know, in Australia, his case ended up as the subject of intense legal |
| 1:16.4 | and political argument. It's also brought into sharp focus the issue of vaccination across many, |
| 1:21.9 | many sports. It's a talking point in, the NBA, the NFL and the English Premier League to name a few. |
| 1:28.2 | And then there's next month's Winter Olympics in Beijing, where unvaccinated competitors have |
| 1:33.1 | had to quarantine in China for 21 days before the event. So we've brought together three guests |
| 1:38.6 | who've been exploring why athletes might be concerned about the vaccine and what's being done |
| 1:42.7 | to address those worries. They are Dr. Tavisha Perik, a sports physician in Mumbai who works with |
| 1:48.9 | tennis and badminton players, marathon runners and big soccer leagues in India. The sports writer |
| 1:54.4 | Matt Sullivan is in New York in the United States and joining us from Istanbul, Elizabeth Williams. |
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