Covid-19: What Next?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why have some countries run mass-testing operations when others, including the UK, have not?
David Aaronovitch examines how South Korea and Germany have approached the coronavirus pandemic and what they have learned from the data they've gathered.
He also looks at how the hunt for a vaccine is progressing and who is in the race, as well as the role existing anti-viral drugs might play in reducing the threat posed by Covid-19.
Contributors:
Professor Devi Sridhar, Chair of Global Public Health, University of Edinburgh
Dr Jerome Kim, Director General of the International Vaccine Institute
Dr Philipp Zanger, Head of the Institute of Hygiene, Infection Control and Prevention at the Rhineland-Palatinate Agency for Consumer and Public Protection
Professor Adrian Hill, Director of the Jenner Institute
Professor Johan Neyts, virologist, University of Leuven, Belgium.
Producers: Kirsteen Knight, Darin Graham & Rosamund Jones Editor: Jasper Corbett
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.7 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Ronovich. |
| 0:10.1 | The briefing room is the virtual space where you and I sit down and get to understand a big issue |
| 0:15.5 | with the help of the top experts on the subject. |
| 0:19.3 | This week, what else? Coronavirus. And what I'm going to look at |
| 0:23.8 | three very specific questions. What testing does? The search for a vaccine and whether any |
| 0:31.1 | existing drug might be useful in suppressing COVID-19 and lightening the health burden. |
| 0:38.0 | Towards the end of January in the last series, |
| 0:41.1 | we did a programme on coronavirus and, after listening to the experts, |
| 0:45.5 | this is why I concluded. |
| 0:48.5 | Don't panic, there's no need, this isn't the big one. |
| 0:52.3 | If there is a threat, it's probably to additional demand on health |
| 0:55.3 | services creating problems elsewhere. Wrong. Though the health service bit was sort of right. |
| 1:08.0 | In the 10 weeks since then, we've all learned a lot more. |
| 1:16.2 | You may think too much sometimes. |
| 1:18.8 | But there are some very specific questions, |
| 1:21.0 | the answer to which will tell us how long it will take us to beat the virus. |
| 1:25.8 | This week, we want to look at the main three. |
| 1:29.1 | First, I want to find out why some countries, |
| 1:31.9 | namely Germany and South Korea, are mass testing |
| 1:34.4 | and what difference that might make. |
| 1:37.1 | Second, whether an existing drug might be repurposed |
... |
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