Welcome to Episode 6 of “COVID: What comes next,” an exclusive weekly Providence Journal/USA TODAY NETWORK podcast featuring Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and an internationally respected expert on pandemic response

COVID: What comes next - With Dr. Ashish Jha

Today, Jha discusses the continuing stresses on hospitals across America as doctors now are forced to make decisions on who will and will not be admitted when so few beds are available. Shortages affect both patients with coronavirus disease and those without – people living with heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other conditions who in ordinary times would receive hospital care.

Jha also debunks the theory that the COVID-19 virus was manufactured or emerged from a laboratory, declaring convincingly that science almost certainly will confirm that it crossed over from an animal, likely a bat, into the human population, as many other deadly viruses have. He discusses what science and medicine have learned about the virus since it was first reported late last year in China, and also the available treatments as the world awaits the first distribution of vaccines.

Finally, Jha walks us through how the virus functions: how it can replicate by the millions and even billions inside a person, overwhelming the body’s natural defenses and prompting an immune response that itself can be potentially deadly as the lungs become inflamed and begin to lose function. Such a situation, of course, urgently demands medical care.

This weekly podcast is hosted by G. Wayne Miller, health reporter for The Providence Journal. It can be downloaded at:

https://omny.fm/shows/covid-what-comes-next-with-dr-ashish-jha