The Virus What Went Wrong Part 1

As COVID-19 spread across the globe, why was the U.S. caught so unprepared? An investigation of how America’s leaders failed to prepare and protect us — and who is accountable.

In this 90-minute FRONTLINE documentary special, award-winning journalists Marcela Gaviria and Martin Smith trace the coronavirus’s path across the globe and identify a chain of fateful missteps — from Chinese authorities’ early silencing of dissent around the virus's emergence in Wuhan, to the World Health Organization’s failure to more quickly sound the alarm, to Italian officials’ slow initial reaction. Then, “The Virus: What Went Wrong?” zeroes in on key moments in the Trump administration’s halting response — including warnings going back to January, the CDC’s inability to manufacture and mass-distribute a working COVID-19 test early on, and a string of missed opportunities to contain the virus before it was too late.