The latest on the science of the novel coronavirus

In the months since the COVID-19 pandemic has spread around the world, medical staff and researchers are rapidly learning more about the novel coronavirus. However, there’s still a variety of unknowns as efforts to ensure more testing, develop treatments and find a vaccine continue.

In the meantime, politicians are talking about how — and when — to ease social distancing restrictions to reopen the economy. Public health officials are pointing to contact tracing as an option in all of this.

MPR News host Kerri Miller talked with returning guests Angela Rasmussen, a Columbia University virologist, and Dr. Megan Culler Freeman, an infectious disease fellow at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine about testing, how the virus spreads and what they hope for moving forward. The duo first joined the show in late March.

While reflecting on the past month of the coronavirus pandemic and what they expected, Culler Freeman said that a greater volume of testing is still needed and Rasmussen added that she’s disappointed in the testing capacity seen so far.

“It seems like we’re still actually having some of the same issues that we were having thirty days ago and I’m not very happy or really quite sure why that is the case,” she said. “We were supposed to have completed millions of tests by the end of March and we’re still sort of straggling by, so I’m hopeful, at least, in the next 30 days that we’ll be able to resolve some of that.” 

Guests:

• Dr. Megan Culler Freeman is an infectious disease fellow at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

• Angela Rasmussen is a virologist and associate research scientist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.

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