Unleashing the Pandemic: Early Perceptions and Actions

It is week one of the coronavirus. In this critical time, decisions were made that set the entire trajectory of the crisis. The program uses exclusive interviews with a cast of characters who were on the ground at the hospital in the very beginning. Their stories, combined with striking audio from the heat of the moment, brings listeners into the critical turning-points that defined the crisis to come. We meet Dr Li, the head of the ICU in Wuhan and one of the first doctors to intubate a patient with Covid-19. As his hospital became overrun with patients, he and his colleagues debated just how contagious the virus was, what should be told to the general populace, and the proper government response.