LISTENING BBC 6-minute English: Coronavirus vs other pandemics

Answer the following questions according to the information provided in the text.
1. Where did the Silk Roads run?
2. Why is Neil fed up with coronavirus?
3. According to Peter Frankopan, in what ways were some former pandemics
worse than coronavirus?
4. How was the plague spread across Europe?
5. How does a country's geographical position affect the rate of expansion of
coronavirus?
6. Why has the UK, being geographically a quasi-peripheral country, received a high dose of the virus?
7. From a historical viewpoint, why isn't this pandemic so terrible?

Vocabulary match:
1 the bigger picture a. optimistic, promising
2 lethal b. the long-term, overall view of a complex situation
3 high-density c. happening at the edge, not centre, of something
4 peripheral d. predecessors, forefathers
5 flight routes e. causing death; extremely dangerous
6 hopeful f. airplane routes
7 disease g. grave disorder or illness
8 ancestors h. having people living together in buildings close to one another
9 social distancing i. staying far enough from people, about 2 meters away from them.

Fill the gaps with the suitable word:

spread curbing benefits speed with research foremost
The achievements of vaccine _____________ and development bring a hope to our societies that we
may cope ____________ the COVID-19 pandemic. There are two aspects that should be maintained
in balance: the immediate necessity for _____________ of vaccine research and the inherent need for
protection of research subjects, which is the ________________ concern of research ethics.
Vaccines are given to an otherwise healthy person in hopes of preventing infection and
_____________ community ____________ of a disease. There is both a personal component and a
public health component in considering the risks and _____________ of taking a vaccine.

Coronavirus: EU urged to adopt 'vaccine passports' - Number the paragraphs in the correct order -

But a vaccine passport faces opposition from some of the bloc's 27 member states. France and
Germany say such documents could be premature because data on the efficacy of vaccines in preventing a
person from carrying or passing on the virus is incomplete.
There are also concerns that enabling a vaccinated minority to enjoy foreign travel while others, such
as young people who are not seen as a priority for inoculation, continue to face restrictions would be
discriminatory.
During the virtual meeting on Thursday, apart from the “digital vaccination certificate", EU leaders
also discussed how to address concerns over the slow vaccine rollout that has been widely criticised.
Greece and Austria are urging other EU states to adopt coronavirus vaccination "passports", which
could help revive Europe's stricken tourist industry. The idea of such a document, likely to be a certificate,
would be to permit those who have been vaccinated to travel freely within the EU.