COVID-19 docos on Discovery

Discovery will screen two documentaries on the COVID-19 pandemic across the next two Sundays.

They will look at what caused this crisis and the insights we can learn from scientists and experts leading the fight, and the search for a cure.

COVID-19: Battling The Devil – Sunday 5 April at 7:30pm
Narrated by Joel Lambert, this documentary has unrivalled access to Wuhan, China during the city’s lockdown – which at the time was the biggest in human history.

On January 23, 2020, China took an historic step to quarantine an entire city. Nine million people were living in the central city of Wuhan and locking the whole city down was a daring, though extreme measure, to try to stop a virus threatening not just China, but the world. COVID-19: Battling The Devil goes inside Wuhan city under lockdown, with access to the doctors, scientists, volunteers and public officials on the front line in this battle to defeat a new public enemy, and charts the growing concern in China in the run up to lockdown, as scientists race to understand and control the virus. In honest interviews on location we discover the story inside the city after lockdown: the tension and stress, the courage and the commitment of the people of Wuhan. And find out how lessons learnt here could help the rest of the world in the battle to come.

Pandemic: COVID-19 – Sunday 12 April at 7:30pm
Pandemic: COVID-19 take viewers inside the fight to contain the pandemic. Experts shed light on its treatment and transmission, which initially baffled doctors and scientists who first encountered early patients who fell ill. The special also looks at how within a matter of weeks, COVID-19 spread throughout China and beyond, alarming healthcare professionals and scientists, and reveals why the virus is unique, why the world was so unprepared for it and what could have been done differently to contain its spread.

The special also traces the origin of the outbreak in the United States to the first patient, its rapid spread in Seattle and probe the dramatic and unexpected transmission across the country. Viewers will hear from the leading experts in medicine on the frontlines as well as academia, government officials and patients with first-hand accounts.

Despite quarantines in multiple countries such as China, Korea and Italy, in a few short weeks the world has watched as the virus has spread – where countries such as Italy are seeing hundreds die each day, even while the country has gone into lockdown. Every day the story takes another dramatic turn, as the number of infected and reported deaths in the United States continues on an upward trajectory. Pandemic: COVID-19 examines the effects of the drastic measures happening across America as institutions, schools and businesses are shut down to prevent transmission. This timely special sheds insight from those leading the fight to find answers as well as a possible cure.