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The Documentary: The Coronavirus Front Line: Coronavirus Front Line: The search for a vaccine - part two

Covid-19 vaccine vials

09/02/2021 GMT

Coronavirus Front Line: The search for a vaccine - part two

The Coronavirus Front Line

BBC World Service - The Documentary, The Coronavirus Front Line, Coronavirus Front Line: The search for a vaccine - part two

Winifred Robinson reports on the global race to create a vaccine for Covid-19

Winifred Robinson reports on the global race to create a vaccine for Covid-19.

The medical teams at Bradford investigate the hesitancy over the Covid-19 vaccine. A team of young ambassadors is recruited to help build trust locally and medical teams follow up with those who appear reluctant for a variety of reasons. Abdul Majeed is one of those doubters, even though his uncle, Nawab Ali, has died from Covid and his father, Abdul Saboor, had been gravely ill in intensive care with Covid-19 for two months.

Abdul says he is worried by online media reports that the vaccine might be a way of micro-chipping people, and of altering their DNA. He is also suspicious about the long term side effects and mistrusts the official reassurances. He had similar doubts about Covid itself in the early months of the pandemic and did not believe it was real.
 
Dr Wright and the medical teams believe that around 70% of people will have to receive an effective vaccine, to stop the virus circulating in the population:  the hope is that this can be achieved by late summer:

(Photo: Coronavirus vials. Credit: Getty Images)

The Documentary: The Coronavirus Front Line

This is the account of one hospital’s race to help those made ill by the Coronavirus.

This is the account of one hospital’s race to help those made ill by the Coronavirus.  A British Doctor, Professor John Wright, is helping Bradford Royal Infirmary to prepare for Covid-19. He  is one of the thousands of health professionals around the world now trying to treat patients in this pandemic. 

He’s an expert in fighting epidemics and has worked in outbreaks of Ebola, Cholera and HIV around the world. He thinks it’s important to share what clinical staff and support workers are facing at this critical time. He’s been recording on the hospital wards as the disease takes hold, the number of cases starts to climb and the pressures intensify.

These recordings with frontline staff at all levels of Britain’s National Health Service take you behind the scenes on the hospital wards as they plan for what is to come, and then cope with a wave of people with a new and highly infectious disease. They let us share in the deliberations, personal and professional, and in the painful life and death decisions being made in the face of this unprecedented global threat.

Presented by Winifred Robinson.

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