Inside Health: The Virus

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BBC Radio 4 LW

Inside Health

Factual: Health & Wellbeing

Series that demystifies health issues, bringing clarity to conflicting advice.

Series that demystifies health issues, separating fact from fiction and bringing clarity to conflicting health advice.

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Inside Health: Inside Health: The Virus: Southampton update; health anxiety; death certifications; fast-track drug screening

Southampton update; health anxiety; death certifications; fast-track drug screening

BBC Radio 4 - Inside Health, Inside Health: The Virus, Southampton update; health anxiety; death certifications; fast-track drug screening

Southampton update, health anxiety, death certifications and fast-track drug screening.

Will levels of health anxiety rise during the  pandemic? Plus how fast-track screening of anti viral and immune suppressing drugs could produce effective treatments for Covid-19.

Every week we’re heading to Southampton General Hospital, where we’ve heard a lot about the doctors and nurses doing amazing work. But this week Erika Wright has been talking to Gemma Blanchett who does a job you might not even associate with the virus or with intensive care – and that’s physiotherapy. Gemma is a respiratory physiotherapist who has the joy of watching some recover with her extraordinary help.

Recovery is going to be a long haul for some and can even take time for those who’ve had the virus with mild symptoms at home.  So what do we know about how long a complete recovery takes?  James Gill GP and Honorary Clinical Lecturer at Warwick Medical School discusses the latest insights.

For people who have already found themselves worrying excessively about their health or who have an obsessive compulsive disorder related to hand washing, this is a particularly difficult time. With all of us now on the look-out for symptoms, Claudia Hammond speaks to Jo Daniels, a Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at Bath University who specialises in health anxiety, and David Adam, author of the Man Who Couldn’t Stop – an intimate account of the power of obsessional thoughts.

There’s been a lot of discussion about how to get accurate numbers for the people who have died from the virus outside hospital and one issue that’s been raised is whether doctors are wary of putting Covid-19 on a death certificate, when there’s been so little testing in the community. GP Margaret McCartney examines the current dilemmas.

Amidst a host of trials to find effective treatments against Covid19,  are there existing drugs which no one has thought of yet? We hear from Dr Lindsay Broadbent whose team at Queens University are testing more than a thousand drugs on human lung cells infected with Covid19 in the lab, to see what might work for both mild and more severe infection.

Producer Adrian Washbourne

Inside Health: Inside Health: The Virus

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Claudia Hammond reports on the unfolding coronavirus pandemic.

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Inside Health: The Virus

Southampton update; health anxiety; death certifications; fast-track drug screening

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