Petrie Dish

As waves of omicron and its extremely contagious subvariants burn through previously uninfected populations, it has become clear that people with mild or asymptomatic cases aren’t immune from long COVID. Host Bonnie Petrie talked to Dr. Monica Verduzco Gutierrez, professor and distinguished chair of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, to learn what we know about post-COVID syndrome and what we need to do to prepare for the decades of disability that may remain long after the pandemic is in the rear view.

COVID-19 testing clinics around the country are closing, and federal funding for free clinical testing is drying up. But wastewater surveillance could step in to play a crucial role in keeping track of where the virus is and just how much is really circulating out there. In this episode, host Bonnie Petrie takes us to a wastewater treatment plant in Converse, Texas and talks to scientists trying to build a surveillance and sequencing program in South Texas.

Ashley Savidge Hernandez, a Marine Corps spouse and mother of five, delivered a baby while critically ill with COVID-19. How did she and her healthy son Kyzon survive the worst that COVID has to offer?

Dr. Peter Hotez has become one of the faces of the pandemic. The bow-tied Texas scientist has been all over radio and television — and on this podcast, too — explaining viruses generally and COVID-19 specifically. Now Hotez and his partner, PhD scientist Maria Elena Bottazzi, have developed a vaccine that would be cheap and easy to produce.

In this episode, Bonnie Petrie guest hosts The Source on Texas Public Radio to put listener questions about long-haul COVID to two leading experts

Texas has had 24 rural hospital closures since 2005, the most in the country, and the problem is being felt by the most vulnerable.

New research out of South Africa and the UK have found that the omicron variant dramatically reduces vaccine effectiveness in the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. However, there are ways to minimize omicron's impact in the United States.

As of May 13, nearly 120 million Americans are fully vaccinated, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidance saying anyone who is fully vaccinated can take off their masks in most situations, outside and inside.For many in the United States it can feel like the pandemic is over, but many people across the country remain unvaccinated and COVID surges are still happening across the globe. This week's Petrie Dish takes a look at the state of the pandemic.

Dr. Larry Schlesinger urges Texans to keep wearing masks.

A San Antonio mathematician who has modeled this pandemic since the beginning says more than 1 million people could die of COVID-19 by spring.