Virus radio 4

Last on. Sun 22 Dec Tue 17 Dec Related Content Similar programmes By genre: Factual. Show more. Tracking the virus hunters who race to understand and extinguish new pathogens.

Fighting epidemics requires effort from across the scientific spectrum. Producer: Sandra Kanthal Show less. Available now 57 minutes. For example, when it comes to managing our parks, rather than reprimanding people for not keeping a distance, we need to facilitate opening up more green spaces like private golf courses or playing fields.

So, the question is, how can we physically distance without socially isolating? But not everybody has got the technology they need to connect online, so how will the government support those people? Particularly vulnerable people are those who suffered from mental health problems before, people who have been seriously ill and recovered, and those who are key workers doing really challenging tasks.

Within the NHS, he believes there should be a graded return to work over the weeks and months, or we risk damaging staff. The same applies to other occupations, where employees might be under pressure to make up lost revenue. People have been doing remarkable work under extremely challenging circumstances. When hospitals are full of patients, they're said to be "hot".

The coronavirus crisis will push up the temperature of hospitals across the UK and in the first in a special series of weekly dispatches from the medical front line, producer Erika Wright will be taking the temperature of University Hospital Southampton - or The General - in Hampshire which services almost two million people in the south of England as they cope with the influx of Covid patients. In this first dispatch, Erika talks to the Divisional Director for Medicine, Dr Trevor Smith, who says as patients have been moved out of this large teaching hospital to make space for coronavirus patients, the hospital's current temperature reading is "cold", but all staff know that this will soon change.

This virus is deeply frightening for everybody, but often for older people and those with underlying health conditions it is even worse. The fear is that if hospitals are overflowing, then crude cut-offs by, for example, age, might determine who does or doesn't, get a a bed in intensive care.

But Dr Mark Roberts, consultant in acute and geriatric medicine and chair of the British Geriatric Society in Northern Ireland, tells Claudia that health care professionals don't and wouldn't make such arbitrary decisions based on age. Instead, he says, decisions about access to intensive care beds or in-patient care will continue to be made at the bedside, with compassion, and with a focus on who has the greatest capacity to benefit.