Prognosis: Misconception

The tedious and time-consuming practice of contact tracing is seen as an essential ingredient for suppressing the coronavirus around the world; but not every country has invested in it. The World Health Organization has praised Germany for its contact tracing practices. The country has about a quarter the deaths of neighboring France, despite a more flexible lockdown. Last weekend it continued its cautious move toward pandemic normalcy by letting restaurants re-open. Naomi Kresge reports on the Würzburg region, where armies of tracers are fighting the virus with old-fashioned tools.

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The aviation industry is wrestling with ways to control the coronavirus and get people back to flying. Airports have seen a 90 percent drop in passengers since mid-March. But as states ease lockdown restrictions, more people are expected to fly. Airports today are starting to make changes in the hopes that passengers will be safer as they fly. Justin Bachman reports on what it looks like to fly during a pandemic, and how air travel may change going forward.

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When Covid-19 hit, Gilead Sciences Inc. had enough of its experimental drug remdesivir ready to test and start manufacturing it at a larger scale. That's because it had started stockpiling not just the drug, but its ingredients, at the first hint there may be a new coronavirus. Robert Langreth reports on why the company was able to act early to prepare for a pandemic when so many businesses and institutions did not.

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As Covid-19 infects more and more people, doctors around are learning that the coronavirus doesn’t just attack the lungs. The virus can cause kidney failure; send the body’s immune system into high gear; and lead to a range of clotting-related disorders. Jason Gale reports on how much more we have yet to learn about what the virus does to the body.

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After months of sheltering in place, some people have begun looking for ways to get around some of the more onerous social distancing guidelines. That’s especially true as the weather warms up in the U.S. Bloomberg reporter Kristen V. Brown collected listener questions around social distancing etiquette, and brought them to an expert to clear up the confusion. If you have any more quarantine questions, give us a call at 646 324 3490. We may even play your voicemail on a future show.

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Last week, a five-year-old boy in New York died from Covid-19-related complications. Dozens of other children are becoming sick with a similar cluster of symptoms that mirror a rare condition called Kawasaki disease. The accepted wisdom had been that children could transmit the virus, but not get sick from it. The new illness is throwing that assumption into question. Jason Gale talked to the world’s leading expert on Kawasaki disease to help unpack what is going on.

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Last week, researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory released alarming news: At least one variant of the virus that causes Covid-19 had significantly mutated to become more contagious. If true, this would have major implications. A new variant could, for example, hamper efforts to develop a vaccine or mean that people who’ve already had Covid-19 might face a greater risk of getting it again. But critics said the data didn’t support such a big claim. Kristen V. Brown discusses what it really means that the virus is changing.

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Antibody tests are suddenly everywhere. These tests are designed to determine whether someone contracted the virus in the past. They help policy makers understand how the virus spreads, and whether measures to contain the virus are working.

Federal regulators relaxed guidelines to make it easier for companies to produce the tests, but this has allowed for a flood of unreliable--and sometimes fraudulent--tests to be offered to consumers. Now, Kristen V. Brown reports, the government is trying to control the mess.

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Dozens of research teams across the world are racing to deliver a vaccine for the coronavirus. Developing, testing and bringing a vaccine to market is a process that usually takes years, even decades. But that process is being ramped up to warp speed as the virus ravages the globe. A small group of volunteers is already receiving an experimental vaccine. Jason Gale spoke to one of them, and gives us a peek inside the fast-moving world of coronavirus vaccine development.

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Doctor Richard Besser was the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2009, when the H1N1 Swine flu pandemic broke out. The physician-turned-epidemiologist now runs the Robert Wood Johnson foundation with a mission to improve health equality. Reporter Riley Griffin spoke to him about what happens to the most vulnerable communities as states begin to relax social distancing rules; and the danger that we'll never have a vaccine.

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