Watch tonight on PBS at 9:30/8:30c,

As COVID-19 spread from Asia to the Middle East to Europe and its deadly toll mounted, why was the U.S. caught so unprepared? And how did America’s COVID-19 outbreak become the worst in the world, with a current confirmed death toll of over 115,000?

Tonight, FRONTLINE offers answers in The Virus: What Went Wrong?.

From award-winning journalists Martin Smith and Marcela Gaviria, this new, 90-minute documentary special traces the coronavirus’s path across the globe and identifies 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 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.

As the pandemic continues to unfold, The Virus is an urgent and powerful look at how we got here, why our leaders failed to protect us, and what may lie ahead.

The Virus: What Went Wrong? will be available to stream starting tonight at 7/6c at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS Video App. It will premiere on PBS stations (check local listings) and on YouTube at 9:30/8:30c.

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