Experts predict another pandemic, call for urgent action

Virologists have warned that the brand new COVID-19 variant referred to as Arcturus, which has been present in 22 international locations together with the UK and the US, could develop into extra aggressive and will develop into the dominant pressure within the UK. 

Scientists consider that one other epidemic on the size of COVID-19 is inevitable, and Sir John Bell, a number one immunologist, has warned that the nation must undertake an “at all times on” strategy that features constructing a extra resilient healthcare system, finishing up higher surveillance, and figuring out future threats.

Specialists have warned that the UK isn’t prepared for the subsequent world pandemic as a result of the nation is dropping floor when it comes to public companies and defunding key analysis. 

Scientists have stated that the UK isn’t any higher ready for a pandemic than it was in 2020, and disinvestment in infection-monitoring companies, dismantling of key infrastructure and the state of the NHS implies that the nation is susceptible. 

Specialists have pointed to the mothballing of COVID-testing labs and plan to dump the UK’s future vaccine manufacturing and analysis laboratory earlier than it had even opened. 

They’re involved that the NHS is in a worse place to sort out a pandemic now than it was three years in the past, with document waits in A&E, ambulance delays and escalating ready lists. 

Regardless of every thing that has been realized from the COVID-19 pandemic, consultants warn that the UK isn’t ready for the subsequent pandemic, which could possibly be much more devastating than the final. 

Professor Teresa Lambe, one of many principal investigators main the Oxford-AstraZeneca programme, stated the UK had didn’t tackle board many “hard-learned classes” from COVID, and the general public can be “sitting geese” in a brand new pandemic if there are not any additional efforts by the federal government to spend money on preparation. 

Sir David King, a former chief scientific adviser to the federal government who led the 2006 analysis that carefully predicted the COVID pandemic, stated the world is more likely to see one other virus outbreak on the identical scale within the subsequent 15 years. He warned that the federal government had didn’t spend money on the NHS and he was in “little doubt” that it was in “a worse place than it was three years in the past”. 

The previous authorities adviser added that, by failing to fund the well being service or bolster Britain’s skill to reply to one other pandemic, the federal government is “discounting the long run”.