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Monday, February 17, 2025

Next pandemic could be more lethal, warns AstraZeneca vaccine creator

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1169 days ago
20211206
British scientist Sarah Gilbert addresses a press conference at Hotel Reconquista in Oviedo, Spain [Eloy Alonso/EPA-EFE]

British scientist Sarah Gilbert addresses a press conference at Hotel Reconquista in Oviedo, Spain [Eloy Alonso/EPA-EFE]

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGEN­CIES

 

■ Sarah Gilbert says lessons of cur­rent health cri­sis must not be lost and urges cau­tion as new vari­ant rips through Britain ■

 

(AL JAZEERA) — Fu­ture pan­demics could be even more lethal than COVID-19, so lessons learned from the out­break must not be squan­dered and the world should en­sure it is pre­pared for the next vi­ral on­slaught, one of the cre­ators of the Ox­ford-As­traZeneca vac­cine says.

Sarah Gilbert, a pro­fes­sor of vac­ci­nol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ox­ford, said in the Richard Dim­ble­by Lec­ture that the world should make sure it is bet­ter pre­pared for the next virus, ac­cord­ing to the BBC.

The nov­el coro­n­avirus has killed 5.26 mil­lion peo­ple across the world, ac­cord­ing to Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, wiped out tril­lions of dol­lars in eco­nom­ic out­put and turned life up­side down for bil­lions of peo­ple.

“The truth is, the next one could be worse. It could be more con­ta­gious, or more lethal, or both,” Gilbert said. “This will not be the last time a virus threat­ens our lives and our liveli­hoods.”

“The ad­vances we have made, and the knowl­edge we have gained, must not be lost,” she said.

Ef­forts to end the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic have been un­even and frag­ment­ed, marked by lim­it­ed ac­cess to vac­cines in low-in­come coun­tries while the “healthy and wealthy” in rich coun­tries get boost­ers, health ex­perts say.

A pan­el of health ex­perts set up by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) to re­view the han­dling of the SARS-CoV-2 pan­dem­ic has called for per­ma­nent fund­ing and for greater abil­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate pan­demics through a new treaty.

One pro­pos­al was for new fi­nanc­ing of at least $10bn a year for pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness.

The COVID-19 out­break was first de­tect­ed in Chi­na in late 2019. Vac­cines were de­vel­oped against the virus in record time.

Gilbert said the Omi­cron vari­ant’s spike pro­tein con­tained mu­ta­tions known to in­crease the trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty of the virus.

“There are ad­di­tion­al changes that may mean an­ti­bod­ies in­duced by the vac­cines, or by in­fec­tion with oth­er vari­ants, may be less ef­fec­tive at pre­vent­ing in­fec­tion with Omi­cron,” Gilbert said.

“Un­til we know more, we should be cau­tious, and take steps to slow down the spread of this new vari­ant.”

The vari­ant has spread rapid­ly in the UK, which has prompt­ed calls for lock­down mea­sures from sci­en­tists and ob­servers as some politi­cians and sec­tions of so­ci­ety ad­vise a wait-and-see ap­proach.

About 170,000 peo­ple have died with COVID-19 cit­ed on their death cer­tifi­cates in the UK since the pan­dem­ic be­gan, one of the world’s worst tolls.

COVID-19Health


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