The Cast Of Contagion Records COVID-19 PSAs

The cast of Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 movie Contagion, about a flu pandemic sweeping the world, has got together (sort of) to record PSAs to stop the spread of COVID-19.

The four actors — Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne, and Jennifer Ehle — along with Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z Burns have teamed up with the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health to get the COVID-19 message across. (We should get Chin Han, who’s also in the thriller, to record one for Singapore. Just a suggestion.)

"Everything you’re going to hear from us has been vetted by public health experts and scientists,” says Damon in his four-minute PSA.

In the PSAs, they share info on stopping the spread of COVID-19, safe distancing, vaccine availability, and heeding the experts. “This is not a Chinese virus or a virus that has no effect on the young and healthy,” says Ehle. Listen to the experts, she urges, “that means tuning out the voices with other agendas.”

As of Mar 28, there are 605,283 confirmed cases worldwide.

In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, Contagion became one of the popular rentals on iTunes. In Singapore, the movie can also be streamed on HBO Go. Though no exact viewing figures are revealed, an insider tells 8days.sg that “since January, there has been an increase in viewership of almost 700 per cent for Contagion on HBO Go.”

Watch the PSAs here and spread the word, not the virus.