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 reporter Pablo De La Rosa about his experience with long COVID over the past two years, along with Dr. Monica Verduzco Gutierrez, professor and distinguished chair of...

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 t...

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.

Children between 5 and 11 are now eligible for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Is the vaccine safe for people in this age group? Does it work? What are the potential side effects? We ask an epidemiologist and a pediatrician those questions and much more.

A new podcast from Texas Public Radio explores the confusion, heartbreak, and joy of moving back home to care for an aging relative. It's hosted by longtime NPR journalist Kitty Eisele, who chronicles her journey caring for her dad and the conversations she has with friends and experts along the way. You can listen to the first five episodes of "Demented" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or a...

On this episode of Petrie Dish, host Bonnie Petrie speaks with Dr. Tracey Baas of Texas Biomedical Institute about timing, mixing and matching, who should be getting the booster and more.

The emergence of the delta variant has presented a daunting challenge in the fight against the COVID virus, made worse by a pandemic of bad information. Much of that bad information is being spread intentionally by people who know it's false; it's disinformation. People across the country consume that disinformation and — believing it's true — pass it on. In this episode of Petrie Dish, we explore...

COVID-19 and pregnancy are not a good mix. In this episode of Petrie Dish, Bonnie Petrie explores the risks associated with getting COVID during pregnancy and why doctors are recommending that people who are pregnant get a COVID vaccine.

In this episode of Petrie Dish, a pediatric infectious diseases doctor outlines steps those who are around unvaccinated children can take to keep them safe.

In this week's Petrie Dish, we follow up with Hidalgo County’s health authority about the increasing number of coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in the area.

An increasing number of cases of the delta variant in the United States has many experts urging caution.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control urged adolescents aged 12 and up to get vaccinated against COVID-19 after a recent increase in COVID hospitalizations for that age group. Many adolescents have questions about the vaccine. Petrie Dish asked an expert for the answers.

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 happenin...

The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control have asked vaccine administrators to stop using the Johnson & Johnson one-dose COVID-19 vaccine. The federal agencies called for this pause after six women experienced dangerous blood clots after getting the J&J shot. Dr. Ruth Berggren is an infectious diseases doctor and the director of the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethi...

The pandemic has not been easy on children. TPR's Bonnie Petrie spoke with a renowned pediatrician about how to help them overcome the individual and collective trauma of the last year.

People who've been working on the front lines of the pandemic reflect on the one year milestone and the loss of 500,000 Americans.

This week's Petrie Dish is personal: Host Bonnie Petrie receives her first dose of the COVID-19 Pfizer vaccine.

Dr. Ricardo Cigarroa is a cardiologist in Laredo. He descends from a line of doctors in the city who have been serving patients there for 100 years.

Dr. Katelyn Jetelina is an epidemiologist at UT Health’s School of Public Health in Dallas. She said there are about 12,000 strains of SARS-CoV-2 circulating around the world right now. One of them — the UK variant — is likely to become the dominant strain in the U.S. by March.

The pandemic has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, but it's also stolen our normal lives and our sense of security. How do we go on when pressed under the weight of so much personal and collective pain? This week's Petrie Dish explores pandemic grief and also considers ideas about how to transform that pain into resilience.

Dr. Ricardo Carrion, a virologist at Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio, leads us on a deep dive into coronaviruses, this mutation, and what it may mean for the newly developed coronavirus treatments and vaccines.