Covid-19 continues its grip on the Northern Hemisphere alongside news of a vaccine trial showing real success at first glance. In this second wave update, we explore the latest issues with healthcare professionals from primary care, secondary care, and public health, and discuss what is happening in their field, and put their questions to experts.

In this podcast, Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of The BMJ, talks to Alison Pittard, a consultant in anaesthesia and intensive care medicine in Leeds, and Helen Salisbury, GP in Oxfordshire, and Nisreen Alwan, associate professor in public health at the University of Southampton.

They are joined by Müge Çevik, an infectious diseases researcher at the University of St Andrews, to talk about: what’s happening with track and trace and how to make it work better; transmission and asymptomatic spread, in particular hospital-acquired infections; views on the news of Pfizer’s vaccine; and reaction to US presidential election.

www.bmj.com/coronavirus