Coronavirus: Where's the joined-up thinking?

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2020

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What can be learned from East Asia's response to Covid-19, and from West Africa's Ebola epidemic? And why hasn't there been a unifed global response to the pandemic?

Manuela Saragosa speaks to Francois Balloux, professor of computational biology at University College London, about the difficult options facing the world as we seek to manage coronavirus over the next year or two without crushing the global economy.

But what lessons are there from the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa for the likely long-term impact of the pandemic? Mykay Kamara, chief executive of workplace wellness platform Welbot, was in Sierra Leone during the epidemic and helped recruit medical staff to the region.

Producers: Laurence Knight, Frey Lindsay

(Photo: A worker fixes a WHO coronavirus prevention poster to a billboard in Mumbai, India; Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC with me, Manuela Saragossa. Coming up, when it comes
0:08.4	to epidemics and pandemics, what are the lessons from East Asia? South Korea, to me, it is really
0:14.7	the success story because they did extensive testing and they actually were preparing for a pandemic.
0:21.4	And what can West Africa's experience teach us?
0:24.6	What you call the new normal will emerge relatively quickly,
0:29.5	a new way of working that will keep some economic activity going.
0:34.1	It may not be up to 100%.
0:36.2	That's all here in Business Daily from the BBC.
0:43.2	The epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic may be in Europe, but in South Korea, Taiwan, parts of
0:50.2	China and Southeast Asia, officials are now rushing through new measures after a second wave
0:56.0	of new infections. That comes after weeks of decline there. And there's growing anxiety that the new
1:02.7	spike in cases in Asia is coming from abroad. Here's what commuters in Taiwan had to say about it.
1:11.3	Compared to Asian countries, the West was not as active in dealing with the virus.
1:15.7	They waited until the situation was very serious when it had already spread to the communities.
1:20.5	I'm not that worried the virus will be transmitted back to Taiwan, because it's already very serious in the West.
1:25.5	So I hope they will be active in dealing with the virus
1:27.6	and not affect Asia.
1:33.0	I think initially they were slow in taking actions on epidemic prevention.
1:39.1	Taiwan had experienced the SARS outbreak,
1:41.7	so we had a sense of vigilance.
1:43.9	I'm not that worried about them spreading the disease to Taiwan.
1:47.1	We know how to protect ourselves.
	...

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