And new information on the crown of virus or any other science topic you should really check out our podcast so you can get it wherever you get your podcasts you can also find us at. Science. The coronavirus knows no borders as it spreads across south planets. But it is not an equal opportunities killer. Ease. That rai or not. The social determinants and on the. Day is. So why is it that coveted 19 seems to affect the very poorest among us most of all. Welcome to this 19 special ops in berlin its great to have you with us so far from being the great leveller as its occasionally been described coronavirus has exposed inequalities within societies also often its those at the bottom of the economic ladder who are suffering the most. Senior consultant dr g. Is doing his rounds every patient must be tested for corona virus on admission for some weeks now fewer and fewer suspected cases have been coming to the hospital in time shot in western germany to begin in the beginning we saw very mobile people they were middle aged to younger patients students business travelers holiday makers or those returning from a ski trip for example it was indeed an atypical composition for a long station like ours and over the course of time its shifted a bit to the patients who are now significantly older again which is connected to the fact that more and more Nursing Homes are affected. And what we also have to point out is that weve noticed that some are from a certain social class. For working conditions low wages little living space all this increases the risk of infection and there are also other barriers. Sometimes the most severe cases weve seen here on the ward where new admissions of patients had x. Rays showing almost complete lung failure patients who could not communicate their symptoms clearly because they did not speak the language. That means the hurdle to seek help was much higher for these people mentioned one corridor further along is that covert isolation ward right now only one patient is being treated here. When the pandemic was at its peak so all the beds were occupied. The doctors here had to pool their experience with the disease to find out which patients were hit particularly hard. I notice for me to this clearly has something to do with social status starting with the work you do whether you are more exposed whether you couldnt work from home but instead had to continue working at the supermarket checkout or on public transport and of course that applies more to low paid jobs to jobs that was a factor and in addition there is also the risk of more severe progression if you have the disease already studies have also shown that that is clearly related to a certain social status. Coronavirus patients stay in hospital for a long time they start to talk and then they tell dr j. Like how badly theyre doing in their everyday lives poverty makes people ill and thats also the case with covert 19. Well on that point we can hear from morrow t. N. Who is a professor of International Management at the Wharton School in philadelphia has some research into the effects of policy on pandemics so i asked him why coronavirus seems to be hitting the poorest in societies hardest little many reasons lets begin with the fact that many of them have to continue working they dont have the luxury that i have with cs of working from home they have to continue commuting to their place but work and also maybe theyll have a car to use Public Transportation so theyre always more exposed to the virus itself and then in some countries like United States they have less access to health care and they also. Live with many other people in their homes so for all of those reasons they are both more exposed to the virus and then they are not as well prepared to cope with some of the likely health consequences. And theres there the further negative impact of that that it actually exacerbates the pandemic having a split within a sons society absolutely so whenever you have a duality whenever you have these polities sation form a Socio Economic pond of you then you see that one half of the population perhaps and sealed itself come protect itself from Something Like about any but the other half cannot but of course we are all living in the same planet in this in communities and we cannot completely isolate ourselves and given that you know the virus knows no boundaries and it travels very quickly from one place to another we really should be protecting the entire population not just half of it so thats why inequality or social kind of an economic kind. Really hinder is our efforts of bringing a pandemic such as these under control this the pandemic widening the gap between rich and poor within societies. Yes so most of the lets look at it in the following way most of the people who have lost their jobs are people who are towards the lower end of the Socio Economic scale. You know for many well paying. Service sector jobs. Most of the time highly educated workers. You know those jobs can still be performed those Companies Still have customers theyre still having revenue they can still operate. But it is unfortunately a lot of those workers in other kinds of industries the lower paying jobs that are being for the most part the affected by employment think about restaurant workers being you dont use in their jobs think about other types of workers for example who have to go into facilities or have being shut down by the crisis so all of those jobs have disappeared most of the unemployed are people who were the lower end of the social economic scale unfortunately so what can we do you say counteract the increasing imbalance and making sure that everyone has brought a little closer together yes so will obviously the long term game here is to try to flatten the curve try to achieve herd immunity and try to come up with treatments and also potentially eventually with a vaccine but in the meantime we need the government we need competence we need society to take care of those people so that theyre not live behind because once again the very negative consequences of this pandemic are so unequally distributed that if we do not do something were going to see a huge increase in terms of poverty and just more broadly you know while being. And weve been talking so far about inequality within societies but what about between societies all we likely to see an increase in the gulf between rich countries and poor countries. Well i think there are 3 categories of currency in the world i mean we have the least little parts of the world a very poor countries we have emerging markets such as china or india or turkey and so on and then we have the it reaches countries i mean from the data ive seen in terms of forecasts what we see is that some parts of the advanced countries are going to recover very slowly thats especially europe unfortunately and also some of the very poor countries are going to be very very much heavily affected but among emerging markets some of them like brasil we know is going to suffer a lot but others may not as much so its a its a more complicated picture than just the distinction between rich and poor obviously the reach have better healthcare we have better instruments or gave these postal but that doesnt mean their economies are going to recover as fast from this crisis and once again i am but they grew concerned about what may happen in europe as professor mauer again from the Wharton School at the university of pennsylvania and now its your chance to ask questions as a science correspondent there aquariums. What kinds of antibody tests are being used. Anybody tests are used to detect whether youve been exposed to the virus and are producing antibodies that could protect you from future infection there are a number of approaches for detecting them but but 2 are especially important on the commercial market the 1st type is whats called a rapid diagnostic test or an r d t its a point of care tests that often look similar to a pregnancy test done and it gives the same kinds of of colored line results positive or negative the 2nd type of test called an ally is a test that short for for enzyme linked immuno sorbent and say its performed by professionals in the lab on on a larger blood or plasma samples it traps target antibodies on plates that are coated with proteins from the pathogen and it makes those antibodies visible allies the tests are are more sophisticated and accurate but our d t tests are much faster and cheaper. If my partner gets covert 19 after me can i give her a plasma transfusion or would that help her. Whats known as convalescent plasma therapy has been around for for about a century it involves taking blood plasma from people who have recovered from the disease and injecting it into someone who is still sick because the plasma contains antibodies it can at least theoretically help the recipient fight off the illness now we know the method can bring positive results with other pathogens and were hopeful it will do the same. With sars cove 2 trials are still ongoing on where and whether and how effective convalescent plasma therapy is against covert 19 meanwhile with a lack of other effective medicines plasma is being administered in emergency situations because its been shown to be safe and Health Care Authorities are requesting that people who have recovered donate as often as possible. And you can of course post your questions to derek on our you tube channel and while youre online and want to keep up with the latest developments on the coronavirus you should subscribe to our news lets just log on to d w dot com slash corona das newsletter. Thats it from this covered 900. 00 special thanks for joining us. India. Coming. Here theres increasing tension between humans and. Some of the elephants damage what they will be taking a lot more of that and Early Warning system is supposed to prevent escalation and still lives on both sides. Next to. This is some dope story a stubborn rice farmer from thailand. His problem tests. His credo no chemicals. His wife thought he was crazy. And i bought ducks. And his plan was. To step in. Step out. Orders. The students on tests stand a chance. The boy systemizing the farmers free. The finest egg production to top it off. Training successful. Jocasta. Starts john 27. Dollars. Thank. You. The more body for one has made sure that the entire world is just a click away acknowledge a souped and walk every bead routine and does he go to sleep but many skeptics argue the constantly staring into our screens is detaching us from the nature that so dollars us this week we interview super the people who are trying to bridge this gap when theyre in a real