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Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day 293 since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic.

On Wednesday, you heard about how SARS-CoV-2 spread from bats to people.

Today, we're revisiting one of our early episodes that explores a similar theme.

Bats are almost certainly the source of this pandemic,

but these flying mammals may also hold the clues to stopping the next one.

Bloomberg, senior editor Jason Gale, has more.

Music has more. The story of bats and viruses can be traced to an Australian veterinarian, Dr. Hume Field.

The son of a policeman, Hume grew up in various parts of the northeastern state of Queensland,

where he developed a fascination for Australia's native fauna.

I'd always had an interest in animals, and I guess growing up as a kid, I can remember my parents saying,

Oh, Hume loves animals, he's going to be a vet.

And this was really a bit of a throwaway line because nobody in our family had ever been to university, let alone to a five-year

veterinary course. But nonetheless, the sort of seed took hold, I guess, at least with me.

When I caught up with Hume, he was in his home office in a leafy coastal area

southeast of Brisbane. You could hear chattering wildlife and vocal pets, as well as drought-breaking

rain. Hume graduated from the University of Queensland in 1976. He worked for a couple of years

in a small animal practice, but his interest in wildlife led him to pursue further study in the evenings, first in environmental science, then a doctorate in the mid-1990s.

It allowed him to combine his love of native animals with emerging diseases at a time when the state's agricultural authorities were trying to figure out the source of a deadly

...