When was Netflix series Pandemic filmed and is it based on coronavirus?
25 March 2020, 15:15 | Updated: 1 April 2020, 08:55
When did Pandemic come out on Netflix and is it based on the coronavirus pandemic?
Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak has become one of the most-watched TV series’ on Netflix.
But there is a stark coincidence in the timing of the series release, which came just a few weeks before the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared coronavirus a pandemic.
As thousands of people get ready to binge watch, when was Netflix’s Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak filmed and is it based on COVID-19? Find out everything…
When was Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak filmed?
Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak was released on January 22, 2020. But it was filmed in 2019 in the United States and across the world.
The series isn’t based on the outbreak of coronavirus, but attempts to explain how a viral outbreak begins and rapidly spreads across the globe.
Pandemic touches on the 1918 Spanish Flu, Ebola, the importance of vaccinations and combating the common flu and shines a light on the public health officials, doctors and experts who are fighting the COVID-19 outbreak.
In the first episode, scientists discuss the theory that the world is due a new, deadly virus, 100 years after Spanish influenza killed 50 to 100 million people.
It also looks at the work of doctors in the US and Asia working to develop a super vaccine to combat killer flu outbreaks.
Other episodes look at the ebola outbreak and what is being done to combat outbreaks in India and on the US-Mexico border.
Speaking to Mashable, executive producer of the series Dr Sheri Fink said: “Pandemic can tell us how new viruses emerge, how people around the world monitor for them, what frontline doctors face in trying to treat them, what it looks like to try to stop an outbreak, and the basic things that people can do to themselves stay healthy.
“What it can't tell us about is this specific novel coronavirus, because of course, we were not filming when this coronavirus came out.
“So it can't tell you what the situation is now where you live."
