Q&A webinar on COVID-19

The Air Conditioning & Mechanical Contractors’ Association (AMCA) will be hosting a Q&A webinar on COVID-19, featuring Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty AO.

To be held on Thursday April 16, the Q&A session will shed light on the following questions:

• What makes COVID-19 different from other viruses’?
• How long we will need to maintain social distancing measures?
• Have there been any in-roads into effective medications to combat the virus?
• How far away is a vaccine?
• Why is indoor air quality so important and how can HVAC systems promote community health?

Those who have questions for the epidemiologist may submit them before the close of business on Wednesday April 15, to AMCA. The best questions will be shortlisted and put to Professor Doherty.

A leading voice on infectious disease research, Professor Doherty shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1996 with Swiss colleague Rolf Zinkernagel, for their discovery of how the immune system recognises virus-infected cells.

His research focuses on how to better promote human defence against viruses.

Doherty was Australian of the Year in 1997, is the Patron and namesake of the Doherty Institute, and currently shares his time between St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis in the US and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne.

He is the author of several books, including The Beginners Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize, A Light History of Hot Air, Sentinel Chickens: What Birds Tell Us About our Health and the World, Pandemics: What Everyone Needs to Know, The Knowledge Wars and The Incidental Tourist.