Track Your State's Testing; What A Possible Mutation Means
Consider This from NPR
NPR
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2020
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
A mutated strain of the coronavirus may have helped it spread more widely, according to a new preliminary study that's getting a lot of attention even before it's peer-reviewed.
Despite Trump administration claims that the coronavirus may have accidentally escaped from a lab in China, scientists it's more likely the coronavirus spread naturally. Listen to Short Wave's episode about why, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and NPR One, and explore a second episode about the likelihood the virus originated in bats.
One of the deadliest outbreaks of the coronavirus has been at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home in Massachusetts. Officials are investigating what happened there.
Plus, experiments are undeway to see if dogs can be trained to sniff out the coronavirus. Meanwhile, U.S. animal shelters have reported having all their dogs fostered during the lock down.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Odds are the state where you live is not testing enough people for the coronavirus. |
| 0:05.7 | Ultimately, I am deeply worried that four, six, eight weeks down the road, we're going to find |
| 0:11.5 | ourselves in the exact same place we were in in early March, and we will have to shut the economy |
| 0:16.5 | down again. Dr Ashish Jha runs the Harvard Global Health Institute, which, along with NPR, |
| 0:23.6 | has analyzed testing in every state. It turns out that only a handful of states are doing |
| 0:29.3 | enough testing to reopen safely. You can track how your state is doing. There's a link to that |
| 0:34.2 | in our episode notes. And we learned today that another 3.2 million people filed for unemployment |
| 0:40.8 | for the first time last week. That means in all at least 33.5 million people have lost their jobs |
| 0:48.7 | in the past seven weeks. Coming up, why scientists are racing to understand how the virus is mutating, |
| 0:55.5 | and an effort to train dogs to sniff out. COVID-19. This is coronavirus daily from NPR. I'm Kelly |
| 1:03.7 | McEvers. It's Thursday, May 7. Where did the coronavirus come from? Internet search traffic |
| 1:15.3 | suggests a lot of us are looking for answers to that question. One theory that the White House |
| 1:21.5 | is promoting, a theory for which they have yet to produce any evidence, is that the virus |
| 1:26.5 | leaked from a Chinese lab. Just thinking about the way that we do this type of work. |
| 1:31.3 | I think it's very unlikely. It would be very unlikely. This would be a lab exposure. |
| 1:37.5 | NPR's Daily Science podcast shortwave, talk to virologists and epidemiologists, |
| 1:42.8 | and heard over and over again that it is far more likely this virus originated and spread |
| 1:48.1 | naturally by way of close contact between humans and animals. Here's why. First, there are many |
| 1:56.0 | coronaviruses out there. Evidence suggests this coronavirus might have come from bats, which are |
| 2:01.4 | studied in a lab in Wuhan, the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It's a top-tier Chinese research center, |
| 2:07.7 | but experts also estimate that bats on a global scale carry almost 4,000 different coronaviruses. |
| 2:15.5 | Most of the virus is actually probably don't even have the capacity to infect humans. |
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