If you’re an avid follower of COVID-19 developments, you may have wondered what the phrase, “PCR equipment” means. It stands for polymerase chain reaction, which is the process that labs use to check whether someone with COVID-19 symptoms has the new coronavirus, after taking a medical swab, usually from both nostrils. 

In line with World Health Organization advice to countries to test as many cases of suspected infection as possible, the race is on to find enough PCR machines for everybody. And that’s where Paul Molinaro comes in; he’s the cool, calm and collected head of logistics at the WHO, which with other UN partners is part of a major new initiative to help kit out 135 countries trying to see off the pandemic.

He’s been talking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.

The Breadfruit Institute in Hawaii is promoting the local foodstuff as a response to “critical global food security issues,” especially for developing island states.

Daniel Dickinson met research technician and farmer Noel Dickinson at the National Tropical Botanical Gardens on the island of Kauai and began by asking her to describe what the plant looks like. 

Facemasks – a million of them - are just some of the precious cargo being dispatched to all corners of Africa by the UN, as the continent braces for the spread of COVID-19. Managing this huge task is Amer Daoudi, Senior Director of Operations for the World Food Programme.

In an online interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, Jordanian national, Mr. Daoudi, takes us behind the scenes at the agency’s humanitarian hub in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, where a UN-wide supply chain operation is now in full swing.

Making sure that information about COVID-19 is accurate, and how to stay protected, is crucial to getting the pandemic under control.
Conor Lennon from UN News spoke to Moez Chackchouk, Assistant Director-General of UNESCO, and started by asked him how to describe the scale of the so-called “disinfodemic”