Whether it’s a new virus or antimicrobial resistance, governments must build on the lessons of 2020 to defeat the next outbreak
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we never had to face another pandemic? As we reflect on the past year, the words that come to mind are “never again”. Never again should more than 120,000 lives be lost to a contagious virus, a number that would have been unthinkable almost a year ago, when government advisers thought that losing 20,000 people would be a good outcome. Nor should we endure another year of lockdowns, and the pain of job losses and unemployment that followed. And nobody ever wants to see children taken out of school for 21 weeks of the year again, unable to learn in classrooms or see their friends.
But scientists are clear that we will face another pandemic in the future. Most agree the question is when, not if. In 2018, I gave a talk at the Hay festival outlining a scenario that was loosely based on recent news reports: a farmer becomes infected with an antibiotic-resistant bacterium from a pig in China, spreading this infection through their community and then boarding a plane to the UK. The worrying thing about this scenario is that such bacteria, which evade our antibiotics of last resort, are already upon us. They could yet be the source of a future pandemic.
