Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day forty seven
Speaker 1: since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Our main story.
Speaker 1: The closest thing we have to a giant laboratory for
Speaker 1: studying coronavirus is Iceland. The tiny, isolated nation has some
Speaker 1: of the perfect conditions for observing and tracking the spread
Speaker 1: of COVID nineteen, including a public that trusts its government.
Speaker 1: The research the government has done there is already informing
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. But first, here's what happened today.
Speaker 1: In the US, calculations about when and how to ease
Speaker 1: up on social distancing measures have been left almost entirely
Speaker 1: to states. Some states have already taken steps to reopening today.
Speaker 1: Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, in a controversial move, allowed barbershops,
Speaker 1: bowling alleys, and other high contact businesses to open up again.
Speaker 1: But in New York State, the location hardest hit by
Speaker 1: the virus, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a more cautious roadmap
Speaker 1: towards restarting some economic activity. In a briefing over the weekend,
Speaker 1: Cuomo talked about a phased in reopening that could start
Speaker 1: as soon as May fifteen, it would begin with construction
Speaker 1: and manufacturing companies. This comes as deaths in the state
Speaker 1: dropped to their lowest level in almost a month. New
Speaker 1: hospitalizations and intensive cases continue to fall. While the governor
Speaker 1: said the worst was over, it is clear the state
Speaker 1: has a long way to go before returning to normal.
Speaker 1: On Monday, officials announced they would cancel the state's presidential primary,
Speaker 1: sketch old for June. When the US Small Business Administration's
Speaker 1: loan program reopened today after a fresh cashion fusion, almost
Speaker 1: immediately it became impossible for lenders to use the government system.
Speaker 1: A flood of applications caused the system to crash as
Speaker 1: early as four minutes after it opened up. Bloomberg News
Speaker 1: reported the SBA hopes to help mom and pop shops
Speaker 1: access a larger share of the new loan money than
Speaker 1: in the first round of funding. They're doing this by
Speaker 1: capping the amount of loan relief banks are allowed to process.
Speaker 1: Advocates of small businesses were concerned the biggest banks could
Speaker 1: dominate disbursement of the three hundred and twenty billion dollars
Speaker 1: in loans and keep mom and pop shops from getting access.
Speaker 1: There was an uproar when the program first launched. After
Speaker 1: big national chains including Potbelly Corporation and the operator of
Speaker 1: Ruth's Chris Steakhouses, landed ten million dollars or more are
Speaker 1: a piece in loans thanks to a loophole, Millions of
Speaker 1: very small businesses, on the other hand, were left stranded
Speaker 1: when the program ran out of money. Countries in Europe
Speaker 1: are pushing ahead with steps to relax lockdowns that slowed
Speaker 1: the spread of the coronavirus. That's despite concerns these moves
Speaker 1: could backfire. Switzerland on Monday allowed an array of retailers
Speaker 1: as well as tattoo studios to open their doors. The
Speaker 1: Swiss flocked to gardening stores to catch up on spring planting.
Speaker 1: France and Spain may outline more steps towards relaxing restrictions
Speaker 1: on Tuesday, and now our main story. Iceland has become
Speaker 1: one of the best places in the world to study
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen. That's because the country is an island nation
Speaker 1: with only one real port of entry and a small population.
Speaker 1: It also introduced widespread testing as soon as the virus
Speaker 1: arrived in March. Now Iceland has become a real world
Speaker 1: coronavirus laboratory and its work over the last few months
Speaker 1: is starting to produce results. Bloomberg reporter Kristen V. Brown
Speaker 1: traveled to Reggy, vic Iceland, just as the global scale
Speaker 1: of a pandemic was starting to become clear. She has
Speaker 1: more on what the Nordic nation has since learned about
Speaker 1: how the virus moves through a population. In early March,
Speaker 1: I was in Recabec sitting in the office of Cowdie Stephenson,
Speaker 1: the founder of this pioneering population genetics firm Decode. I
Speaker 1: was there reporting a podcast about fertility, and Cowdy just
Speaker 1: couldn't stand topic. He was pretty distracted. His phone was
Speaker 1: ringing NonStop. People kept knocking on the door. Let me
Speaker 1: tell let me tell you what. I am a struggling
Speaker 1: a little bit with this discussion because we are now
Speaker 1: facing viral epidemic which is going to have historic impact,
Speaker 1: and because it looks like this is going to be
Speaker 1: the first time in history of mankind where an epidemic
Speaker 1: like these spreads to entire species and I'm very very
Speaker 1: sure pays attack and it looks like it's going to
Speaker 1: have a very serious impact on the functions world of
Speaker 1: our nations. This was about a week before the US
Speaker 1: had declared a state of emergency big outbreaks of the virus.
Speaker 1: We're still limited to a handful of countries, including China
Speaker 1: and Italy, and Iceland only had three cases, all people
Speaker 1: returning from a ski holiday. But Caldi was already mobilizing.
Speaker 1: He wanted to test everyone in the country for COVID nineteen,
Speaker 1: or at least anyone who had so much as the sniffles,
Speaker 1: I have to talk to the certain general because he
Speaker 1: has to clear she has to approve of of us
Speaker 1: stepping in. Usually what is missing all over the world
Speaker 1: is enough screening. So what we're gonna do is calling
Speaker 1: everyone who as sign about respiratory infection, all of those
Speaker 1: with flu and cold and whatever, and screening to figure
Speaker 1: out how the values are spreading in society. Since there's
Speaker 1: only one doorway into Iceland, we have an incredible opportunity
Speaker 1: to figure out how the epidemic is spreading between people,
Speaker 1: and that is what we need to know. A few
Speaker 1: minutes later, the phone rang. It was Iceland's director of
Speaker 1: Health Almamler alum with with Shelton Funn is everything okay, early,
Speaker 1: gonna let you do that? They will, they will let
Speaker 1: us do with this nothing else makes sense. I was
Speaker 1: the rare witness to how fast things moved in Iceland.
Speaker 1: In the course of a one hour interview, Cowery as
Speaker 1: the Director of Health for permission to launch a massive
Speaker 1: testing effort, and got it a month and a half later.
Speaker 1: Iceland has one of the most robust testing programs in
Speaker 1: the world. To date, it has tested more than forty
Speaker 1: six thousand residents. That's nearly of its population. In contrast,
Speaker 1: New York, which has a more aggressive testing effort than
Speaker 1: any other U S state, has tested just over four
Speaker 1: Turning Iceland into a laboratory has yielded real results. The
Speaker 1: nation has more than seventeen hundred people who have tested
Speaker 1: positive for the virus, which is a lot for a
Speaker 1: small country, but authorities say they feel like it's now
Speaker 1: under control. All that's because the number of new infections
Speaker 1: each day has been steadily decreasing since the beginning of April.
Speaker 1: Just a handful of other countries have seen such a
Speaker 1: significant decline in cases. Recently. I caught up Cowry to
Speaker 1: talk about how things were going. We have not taken
Speaker 1: any of these darconic measures that all the nations have done.
Speaker 1: Me enough close to our boats. We have kept our
Speaker 1: elementary school and child care center openly, have kept the
Speaker 1: stores open. We have put abandoned the gathering of more
Speaker 1: than twenty people, and we have encouraged people to keep
Speaker 1: a social distance of two ms, and encouraged people to
Speaker 1: work as much from homeless, plus and and and the
Speaker 1: consequence of these has been that we have the epidemic
Speaker 1: under controls Iceland has also created an app that lets
Speaker 1: people know if they've come into contact with someone who
Speaker 1: has the virus. But the value of Sceland's efforts aren't
Speaker 1: just in demonstrating how an aggressive testing program can really
Speaker 1: slow the spread of the virus. It's also helped researchers
Speaker 1: understand how the virus spreads. Iceland is basically the size
Speaker 1: of a really robust scientific study, and Decode has taken
Speaker 1: advantage of that. Cowari says that Decode has been able
Speaker 1: to trace the origins of every single case of the
Speaker 1: virus in the country, how the virus has changed, and
Speaker 1: how it spreads from one person to another. So if
Speaker 1: a Peter is diagnosed and he has been in contest
Speaker 1: with Maddie and John, we can determine whether he was
Speaker 1: infected by Maddie or John. By having the sequence of
Speaker 1: the virus and all sea of them, it is really
Speaker 1: gives you an effective way of confirming the vein mister
Speaker 1: virus is moving in society. Iceland is also one of
Speaker 1: the few countries that from the get go prioritized screening
Speaker 1: not just sick people, but healthy ones too. This has
Speaker 1: led to some really important insights into how the virus operates.
Speaker 1: For example, screening people without any symptoms revealed the asymptomatic
Speaker 1: people play a big part in spreading COVID. Nineteen researchers
Speaker 1: also identified almost three hundred mutations that haven't yet been
Speaker 1: seen anywhere else in the world. Viral mutations help scientists
Speaker 1: understand things like how likely someone is to get reinfected,
Speaker 1: why some people get so much sicker than others, and
Speaker 1: how the virus spreads. Ragna Hilda da Daughter is a
Speaker 1: freelance reporter for Bloomberg and Recivic. She says that part
Speaker 1: of the reason Iceland's response has been so successful is
Speaker 1: that almost everybody trusts the government. There's been a lot
Speaker 1: of trust in the health authorities in Iceland how they're
Speaker 1: tackling this. So I would say, you know, there are
Speaker 1: We're a little bit used to ups and downs, and
Speaker 1: even though this is a different kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: of a crisis, we are also used to we had
Speaker 1: the financial crisis ten years ago. We are used to
Speaker 1: having volcanoes that you know, blow up on us. So
Speaker 1: I think the nation is kind of taking this as
Speaker 1: a as another task like that. In a way. Radmulder
Speaker 1: herself got tested their decode Cowlies company show up. It
Speaker 1: was very quick, almost like just walking through. They put
Speaker 1: the swap up your nose and and you're done. And
Speaker 1: I got the results within a few hours, so I
Speaker 1: was very impressed. In fact, for contrast, in the US,
Speaker 1: at the height of our testing crisis, it often took
Speaker 1: weeks to return results. It usually still takes days now.
Speaker 1: Iceland is tiny. It's much easier to test huge percentages
Speaker 1: of the population when your country is smaller than a
Speaker 1: city like Oakland where I live. Still, this kind of
Speaker 1: information can help public health efforts better hone in on
Speaker 1: how the virus might spread anywhere. The number of silent
Speaker 1: carry years, for example, suggest widespread testing of those with
Speaker 1: and without symptoms may be necessary to control the disease.
Speaker 1: Decodes parent company, the pharmaceutical giant am Gin is working
Speaker 1: on developing novel coronavirus treatments that use antibodies to attack
Speaker 1: the virus. Decodes research will also inform that work, providing
Speaker 1: genetic insights from patients who are previously infected. So much
Speaker 1: about this virus is still a mystery, though decode has
Speaker 1: its work cut out for it. Are you realize you
Speaker 1: know I have been working on all kinds of diseases,
Speaker 1: start trying to feature out the passive genesis of all
Speaker 1: kinds of diseases for about years, all right, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden into my life force of disease where
Speaker 1: all of the questions are announcers. So in the middle
Speaker 1: of this fiding, that is a peace to me. Cowdery
Speaker 1: says that Iceland's real strength is that it pulled all
Speaker 1: of its resources to tackle this crisis. I can tell
Speaker 1: you that everyone is pulling together. I can tell you
Speaker 1: that that when we run out of swaps, I got
Speaker 1: phone called from from the CEO of Gold knows how
Speaker 1: many companies in Iceland asking me whether we could use
Speaker 1: their connection in the world to find slabs for us.
Speaker 1: Just yesterday, just yesterday, there was achievements of our large
Speaker 1: number of respirators to Iceland because there were four keeen
Speaker 1: companies in Iceland who used their connection to find respirators
Speaker 1: that are so how to come by this day, the
Speaker 1: whole community is turning its back together and it is beautiful.
Speaker 1: We are an unruly national scandal lists who cannot find
Speaker 1: ease when thinks you're going well, But when there is
Speaker 1: a crisis, we are better than any other nations and
Speaker 1: the world. There have been critics who think that Iceland
Speaker 1: has not been aggressive enough, that like many places, they
Speaker 1: should have shut down schools and stores and restaurants. But
Speaker 1: in the midst of a global pandemic, Iceland has shown
Speaker 1: that a tiny island nation in the middle of the
Speaker 1: Atlantic can teach the rest of the world a lesson
Speaker 1: or two. That was Bloomberg reporter Kristen V. Brown and
Speaker 1: that's our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from
Speaker 1: one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot
Speaker 1: com slash Coronavirus and of course, if you appreciate the show,
Speaker 1: please leave us a review and a rating on Apple
Speaker 1: Podcasts or Spotify. The best way to help more listeners
Speaker 1: find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is hosted
Speaker 1: by Me Laura Carlson. The show was produced by Me,
Speaker 1: Top Forehead, Jordan gas Pure and mag Miss Hendrickson. Today's
Speaker 1: main story was reported by Kristin V. Brown. Original music
Speaker 1: by Leo Sidran. Our editors are Francesco Levi and Rick Shine.
Speaker 1: Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.