A future pandemic could be “more contagious” and “more lethal” than Covid-19, Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert has warned, urging against complacency when preparing for new disease threats.
Delivering the 44th Richard Dimbleby Lecture Dame Sarah, the co-creator of the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, said the scientific advances made in research against fighting deadly viruses “must not be lost”.
“This will not be the last time a virus threatens our lives and our livelihoods,” Dame Sarah said. “The truth is, the next one could be worse. It could be more contagious, or more lethal, or both.”
She went on to add: “We cannot allow a situation where we have gone through all we have gone through, and then find that the enormous economic losses we have sustained mean that there is still no funding for pandemic preparedness. The advances we have made, and the knowledge we have gained, must not be lost.”
So far the coronavirus has killed more than five million people and infected at least 265 million. But Dame Sarah warned that “this pandemic is not done with us” yet, amid mounting fears of the threat posed by the omicron variant – which has now been detected in more than 30 countries across the globe.
