Thursday 9pm FRONTLINE: The Virus That Shook The World –
Investigative Series
The epic story of how people around the world lived through the first year of the coronavirus pandemic from lockdowns to funerals to protests.
Filmed in 21 countries across the globe and using extensive personal video and local footage,
FRONTLINE documented how people and countries responded to COVID-19 across cultures, races, faiths and privilege.
The Virus That Shook the World, a two-part documentary special chronicling the first year of the coronavirus pandemic through the eyes of people all over the world from a hot dog vendor in New York City to a ballet dancer in Moscow; from a food blogger in Wuhan to a filmmaker in a remote Indigenous village in Brazil.
There are currently more than 1,200 variant lineages of the COVID-19 coronavirus identified in the world. Viruses are constantly mutating, so any mutation from the original strain identified in Wuhan, China, is considered a variant. The more times COVID-19 is transmitted from person to person, the higher the risk of mutations.
But not all variants are of equal concern to public health experts, who focus on the ones that could make COVID-19 more transmissible, more severe or that could interfere with vaccine efficacy or testing accuracy.
Of those 1,200 lineages, the CDC reports five variants of concern circulating in the United States. B.1.1.7 the most prevalent in the U.S., at 53,819 cases was first reported in Kent, in southeastern England, in December 2020. It spread rapidly across the UK and then on to more than 100 countries. P.1, the second most common variant in the U.S. at 2,598 cases, was first reported on Jan. 10, 2021, in Japanese travelers returning to Tokyo from Man
Tues., Apr. 27, 2021: 10/9c on PBS and on YouTube
Streaming at 7/6c at pbs.org/frontline & in the PBS Video App
www.facebook.com/frontline | Twitter: @frontlinepbs
On April 26 and 27, FRONTLINE presents
The Virus That Shook the World, a two-part documentary special chronicling the first year of the coronavirus pandemic through the eyes of people all over the world from a hot dog vendor in New York City to a ballet dancer in Moscow; from a food blogger in Wuhan to a filmmaker in a remote Indigenous village in Brazil.
Filmed in 21 countries and featuring extensive personal video and local footage, this documentary special from award-winning filmmaker James Bluemel (
The parents of a boy in Kenya who was fatally shot on his own balcony by police enforcing a COVID curfew speak out in 'The Virus That Shook the World.'