Ep 1: Andrew Peters, the COVID-19 virus and what we know for sure

“Birds and bats are one of the dominant invertebrate groups on earth, they go everywhere and surround us in our lives, so it’s not that surprising that there’s enough overlap every now and then for diseases to spill over…The reality is, we need to isolate the risk and deal with that. We can become so obsessed with wet markets but the last global pandemic arose from the North American pig industry, which was swine flu.”

Dr Andrew Peters discusses his career to date and how birds and bats can contribute to the spillover of virus and disease to humans. What are the social, physical and environmental factors contributing? What do we really need to worry about and why did COVID-19 spill over, while lots of other viruses don’t?

Andrew worked as a veterinarian after graduating in 2004, based initially at a mixed practice on the north coast of NSW and then at a bird, reptile and wildlife focused practice in Sydney. In 2009 he left practice to focus on research, doing a PhD at Charles Sturt University. He spent four years catching wild migratory birds, living in remote parts of northern Australia and Papua New Guinea and doing phylogenetic analyses in the lab in order to examine the relationship between people, the diverse native pigeon species of Australasia and a particular group of single-celled parasites.

Episode recorded: 1 May 2020

Host: Jess Mansour-Nahra, Charles Sturt Media

Production: Adam Thompson, 2MCE

Due to our many regional locations, Charles Sturt’s podcast recordings range from phone, to studio, to in-person recordings, leading to some natural variance in recording sound.

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