This week’stvreviews

Under something of a Covid cloud of late, Rebecca found a silver lining in the shape of a documentary which has given her hope better days could be just around the corner...

Ilive by myself and that fact never bothered me until March 23 2020 – the day the UK went into lockdown. At the start, it was terrifying – seeing every country around the world gradually going into lockdown and gradually losing people before their time and not really having anyone to talk to about it on this side of my dodgy internet connection.

I’d heard about Graham Norton having to change the last few chapters of his recent book weeks before it went to print as he’d set the story to finish mid 2020, but with no mention of a pandemic.

Then, one of my favourite shows, New Amsterdam, couldn’t play its penultimate episode of the series which was aptly titled “Pandemic” and had to scramble random clips together so the season finale made some sense. It seemed as though everywhere you turned, the pandemic was having an impact – not just on our health.

Of late, I’ve been trying to ignore the corona-news, which is rather hard to do when you work for a newspaper. I’ve been trusting that the medical and science experts will see us through and I wake up every day thankful that I don’t live in America. The only thing that has really kept me going in all this time has been hope... the hope that I actually get to write something in my 2020 calendar.

Another thing that gave me hope was a programme that aired on Channel 4 on Monday evening, Race Against The Virus: The Hunt For A Vaccine.

It mapped out the world’s progress in finding that all-important vaccine for Covid-19, of which a trial in Oxford, led by Professor Sarah Gilbert, is at the forefront.

I liked this documentary, as it spoke to various people involved in the work against coronavirus, many of whom, such as Professor Gilbert, had already seen a pandemic coming down the line, but didn’t know when it would hit.

What they also didn’t foresee, and which is why it seems like the world is so unprepared despite having known about it coming our way, was the asymptomatic spread.

Another interesting fact was that lockdown, despite being helpful in managing the spread of the virus, has been unhelpful in terms of a vaccine trial, which relies on people getting infected. So this Oxford trial, which is one of six in the world currently in the final stages, was moved to Brazil, where cases are soaring and lockdown hasn’t happened yet, meaning Brazilians could be the ones to light the way ahead in this fight against the invisible enemy.

Professor Gilbert says she believes everyone in the world is likely to become infected if not this year then probably within the next two if no vaccine is found.

But the other concern they face, as echoed by many of her colleagues, is the likelihood of such a vaccine becoming politicised and countries vying with each other to purchase it.

As one of the professors said, this pandemic has brought out the absolute worst and absolute best in humanity.

Pictures: Channel 4. Left: Professor Sarah Gilbert, a vaccinologist at Oxford University, whose team is developing one of six Covid-19 vaccines in the world to be in the final stages of testing. Above: Many have likened the nature of coronavirus to SARS.