Covid-19: Six Months On
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2020
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's been six months since the coronavirus-induced lockdown was introduced across the UK - what have we learned about Covid-19 in that time?
David Aaronovitch explores what we now know about the science of the virus, the symptoms it produces, and the policies which have been developed to tackle its spread.
Contributors:
Ravi Gupta, Professor of Clinical Microbiology, University of Cambridge
Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology. King's College London
Thomas Hale, Associate Professor in Global Public Policy, University of Oxford
Keith Neal, Emeritus Professor in the Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases, University of Nottingham
Team: Richard Fenton-Smith, Kirsteen Knight and Julie Ball. Studio Manager: Rod Farquhar Editor: Jasper Corbett
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:10.0 | Hello, thank you for downloading the briefing room podcast, presented by me, David O'Ronovich. |
| 0:15.6 | And don't worry, I'm going to save you from fast-forwarding and keep the chat brief this week. |
| 0:20.1 | So on with the show. |
| 0:23.0 | Six months ago, the lockdown was announced in Britain. Six months that feels like years. |
| 0:31.5 | This week, I want to know what we've learned in that six months, about the virus itself, about its effects on the human |
| 0:38.8 | body, and about how best to control its transmission. What's changed? Step into the briefing |
| 0:45.3 | room and together we'll find out. First, what do we now know about COVID-19, the spiky beast that has killed more than 40,000 of us here in the UK, since February? |
| 0:59.9 | And how has our knowledge evolved? |
| 1:02.9 | Ravi Gupta is Professor of Microbiology at the University of Cambridge, where he specialises in immunology and infectious diseases. |
| 1:11.2 | Professor Gupta, what were you up to around about the time that COVID-19 first emerged? |
| 1:16.5 | So back in February of this year, |
| 1:19.1 | I was in fact preparing to go to the large HIV conference |
| 1:23.8 | that's held in Boston every other year. |
| 1:26.9 | I was going to present the London patient, |
| 1:29.0 | who was the individual who we demonstrated cure in, and he was the second person ever to be cured. |
| 1:34.7 | And I was going to be presenting the latest data on that individual. And that didn't happen. |
| 1:39.8 | No. In fact, the meeting was cancelled due to coronavirus emerging and the sort of shutdown ensued. |
| 1:46.4 | Now, you've since then become something of an expert on COVID-19. |
| 1:51.6 | Did a lot of people, essentially, scientists like you, essentially have to retool as coronavirus became a big issue? |
| 1:58.5 | Yes, I think many of us thought that given our skill sets and our experience, |
| 2:02.9 | certainly with viruses such as HIV for ourselves, we were compelled in a way to try and answer |
... |
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