Easing the lockdown
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2020
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Some countries have opened schools, hairdressers and small non-food shops. David Aaronovitch asks what has guided those tentative first steps and whether the lockdown can be eased safely.
What have we learnt about the behaviour and epidemiology of the virus and how might that inform decisions in the UK?
He also quizzes experts about how long it could take to end the lockdown fully, and whether some form of social distancing could be in place for many months to come.
Contributors:
Dr Nathalie MacDermott, Imperial College London
Dr Michael Tildesley, Warwick University
Prof Hans Joern Kolmos, University of Southern Denmark
Prof Martin McKee, The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Ngaire Woods, Blavatnik School of Government and Professor of Global Economic Governance at Oxford University
Producers: Kirsteen Knight, Darin Graham and Rosamund Jones Editor: Jasper Corbett
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David O'onovich. |
| 0:05.1 | The briefing room is the audio space where in 28 short minutes, |
| 0:09.0 | you and I get to understand a big issue with the help of the top experts on the subject. |
| 0:14.1 | This week, easing the lockdown. |
| 0:17.1 | How? |
| 0:18.2 | When? |
| 0:19.2 | And what are the risks? |
| 0:31.8 | No. How? When? And what are the risks? This week, the Scottish Government published strategic guidelines for the conditions under which the lockdown could be eased. |
| 0:39.3 | But in Europe, some countries have already started. |
| 0:42.3 | The relaxations have been small, but the process has begun and seems to offer some hope. |
| 0:48.3 | Today, I want to understand what the calculations are that are guiding those policies |
| 0:53.3 | and what we in the UK have to learn from them. |
| 0:56.7 | This side of the vaccine, is there a roadmap to recovery? |
| 1:01.0 | Step inside the briefing room and together we'll find out. |
| 1:08.4 | Let's start with the virus itself. |
| 1:15.1 | If we're to begin exiting lockdown, what do we need to know about COVID-19? |
| 1:20.6 | What have we learned since the beginning of the pandemic? And what do we still not know that we need to? |
| 1:25.7 | Dr. Natalie McDermott is an infectious disease specialist from Imperial College London. |
| 1:30.6 | Natalie McDermott, when we did our first program on this back in January, you were our first expert. |
| 1:31.4 | And the scientific view then was that this virus would be most likely to seriously affect the old |
| 1:37.2 | and the already unwell. |
| 1:38.7 | Now, is that still broadly true? |
... |
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