A deadly epidemic strikes in The CW's 'Containment'

A deadly contagion breaks out in Atlanta, forcing health care professionals and government officials into overdrive as they try to stop its spread in a medical thriller series premiering Tuesday, April 19, on The CW.

In “Containment,” that bug is called H7N2, and its symptoms are ugly: fever, headaches, swollen lymph nodes, bleeding from multiple orifices and, finally, death within a few days — and it is fatal in 100 percent of cases. After it kills a Syrian refugee, his doctor, her boyfriend and others they came into contact with, a quarantine of a portion of the city is declared, forcing those trapped on the inside to fight for their lives.

That includes Katie (Kristen Gutoskie), an elementary-school teacher under lockdown with her class and young son, pregnant teen Teresa (Hanna Mangan Lawrence), and Dr. Victor Cannerts (George Young), a government researcher who made the call on the cordon and is now trying to find a cure.

On the outside, Dr. Sabine Lommers (Claudia Black) heads the government's efforts to contain the outbreak, and she enlists well-respected police officer Lex Carnahan (David Gyasi) to help enforce the cordon in the face of deteriorating public trust. His job is made more difficult by the journalist (Trevor St. John) with a conspiracy theory to prove, and the fact that his girlfriend (Christina Moses) and best friend (Chris Wood) are trapped inside. And then, of course, there is the vial of mysterious white powder found in the belongings of the Syrian — aka Patient Zero — which suggests possible bioterrorism.

As order descends into chaos on the inside, those on the outside race to find a cure.

“It's a good opportunity for science to win,” Black said to a recent gathering of TV critics in Pasadena, Calif. “As in the film ‘The Martian,' you know, it's a big win for science when he says at the end of the film — not a spoiler — ‘You just have to work the problems, and if you work enough of them, you get to go home.' So this is a similar environment. Whether the truth or not is going to save more lives comes into question in the series.

“But also, one of the major aspects of containing a virus is contact tracing,” she continues, “and that will determine, as far as an epidemiologist is concerned, how much people will survive.”

To ensure the series' medical facts were solid, the producers and actors spoke with scientists and physicians and also consulted with state and federal health officials.

“There's a lot of ways to ruffle feathers and to get people very upset if you make assumptions,” executive producer Julie Plec says. “I said, ‘Well, when does the World Health Organization come in?' They were, like, ‘That's the worst question you could have ever asked us. We are offended deeply.' So it's a whole world of politics and hierarchy, but it's fascinating. And we made sure that, when we talked to people, we would say, ‘Would this happen this way?' And either they'd say, ‘Absolutely, that's how it would happen,' or they'd say, ‘Not specifically, but we accept it,' you know. So we were pretty diligent about that.”