Some of the last people in the world to find out about the rapid spread of Covid-19 are a group of 14 men and women sitting in a house in Cologne, western Germany, where they are competing in the country’s 13th season of the reality TV show Big Brother.
The majority of the housemates have been in isolation since 6 February, when news of the novel coronavirus was only just trickling out of Wuhan in China. Since then, they have been cut off from updates from the outside world, except once, when the show introduced four more housemates on 6 March, three days before Germany would report its first death from the virus.
The show’s producers, for the TV channel Sat.1, defended the decision not to update the housemates on the crisis going on in the outside world, telling the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung that the information blackout would only be lifted in certain circumstances, such as a family member’s illness. They also pointed to “special hygiene measures” taken to protect residents themselves from infection, though did not explain what those measures entailed.
But after uproar on social media, Sat.1 changed its position – and announced a live special episode, due to air before the regular slot at 7pm on Tuesday evening, in which the housemates will be told of the growing crisis. They will be given the opportunity to ask questions about the state of the nation, as well as receive video messages from their relatives.
In 2001, the producers of the American edition of Big Brother had to interrupt the show’s second season to tell the final three contestants about 9/11. Even then, the decision to break the news was only prompted by the fact that one housemate had a relative missing in the aftermath of the attacks.
