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The Evidence

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Claudia Hammond joins scientists and experts to explore science’s effect on our world

Claudia Hammond joins scientists and experts to explore the effect science has on the world around us

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The Evidence: Coronavirus: The Evidence: How Covid damages the human body

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Coronavirus: The Evidence

26/06/2021 GMT

How Covid damages the human body

BBC World Service - The Evidence, Coronavirus: The Evidence, How Covid damages the human bodySearch BBC

Covid the chameleon - the multiple ways this virus attacks our bodies

Covid hurts and even kills, but leaves others untouched. What have we learned about the methods of this novel virus. And how can we treat it.

A year and a half in, and in many ways Covid-19 is still an enigma. All over the world, doctors and scientists are still struggling to understand exactly how this new virus undermines our defences and then damages, even destroys, our bodies, in so many different ways. And why are some people completely unaffected?

In this edition of The Evidence, Claudia Hammond and her panel of experts chart the remarkable journey to understand this chameleon-like virus, including the long tail of the pandemic, Long Covid. Millions the world over are suffering under the dark shadow of post-Covid, with a multitude of symptoms months after the infection. Some of them, listeners to the programme, share their experiences.

And, the background story of the world famous RECOVERY trial, set up at record speed in the UK (but now international) to test which treatments could save the lives of the sickest Covid patients.  So far 10 treatments for Covid have been randomised and tested on thousands of patients and the results have shown that six, including the widely used and promoted hydroxychloroquine, make no difference to chances of surviving a hospital stay. While evidence that the cheap, widely-available steroid, dexamethasone, does work, and has so far saved more than a million lives world-wide. 

Joint chief investigator of RECOVERY, Sir Martin Landray, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, admits to Claudia that he’s been asked to include bee pollen and snake venom in the trial, but so far he’s resisted.

Claudia’s expert panel also includes Professor K. Srinath Reddy, cardiologist and epidemiologist and President of the Public Health Institute of India; Dr Sherry Chou, intensivist and neurologist from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine who heads the Global Consortium Study on Neurological Dysfunction in Covid-19 (GCS-NeuroCOVID) and Dr Melissa Heightman, respiratory consultant and Clinical Lead for post-COVID services at University College London Hospitals.

Produced by: Fiona Hill, Hannah Fisher and Maria Simons
Studio Engineers: Donald MacDonald and Matilda Macari

Picture: Male Asian doctor is writing a X-Ray summary of coronavirus patients on a tablet at the hospital, Credit: warodom changyencham/Getty Images

The Evidence: Coronavirus: The Evidence

Magazines & Reviews

Claudia Hammond is joined by experts to answer questions about the coronavirus Covid-19.

In The Evidence Claudia Hammond is joined by an expert scientific panel to answer questions from the audience on a variety of aspects of the coronavirus and Covid 19, from the impact of lockdowns and self isolation on the spread of the disease, to the question of who should be tested and the search for treatments. 
Professor Vivek Jha, Executive Director, of the George Institute for Global Health, India, talks about the situation in his country where a lockdown was announced four hours before it began.

Dr Lyndsey Broadbent, a virologist at Queens University Belfast in Northern Ireland, explains what is now known about the biology of the virus and why it causes serious disease in some people and no symptoms in others. 
Christos Lynteris, a medical anthropologist from St Andrews University, discusses the issue of stigma that’s being experienced by some people who have had Covid-19. 

Claudia also hears from a psychiatrist at the University of Verona in northern Italy, which has taken the brunt of cases in the country about some of the most serious consequences for doctors and nurses, and the general population.

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