The UK is not ready for the next global pandemic as public services are being dismantled and key research is being funded, experts have claimed.
More than three years after the global coronavirus outbreak, top scientists have warned the UK is no better prepared for a pandemic than it was in 2020.
They say another outbreak on the scale of Covid-19 is inevitable, but disinvestment in infection monitoring services, the dismantling of key infrastructure and the state of the NHS mean the country is ‘losing ground’ .
The warning comes as the virologists said The Independent that the new variant of Covid-19 behind an increase of 10,000 new Covid cases per day in India could become more aggressive and could become the dominant strain in the UK.
The variant, first identified in January and known as Arcturus, has been found in 22 countries, including the UK and the US, and has prompted India to resume vaccine production.
“Sitting Ducks”
Sir John Bell, a leading immunologist and member of Britain’s Covid vaccine task force during the pandemic, said it was too easy to dismiss Covid-19 as a “once in a generation crisis”.
write in The Independenthe warned it’s about ‘when, not if, another pandemic strikes’, adding that the nation must take an ‘always-on’ approach that includes building a more resilient healthcare system, better surveillance and identifying future threats.
“Despite all we have learned, we are not ready for the next pandemic,” he wrote. “The next pandemic could be even more devastating than the last. We need to be in a constant state of preparedness for the next big health crisis – if we don’t act now, we won’t be forgiven.
He referred to modeling that suggests there is a 38% chance of another pandemic occurring in our lifetime, which has “the potential to cause even greater destruction”.
Professor Teresa Lambe, one of the lead researchers at the helm of the Oxford-AstraZeneca programme, said the UK had failed to learn many ‘hard-learned lessons’ from Covid. She warned the public would be “sitting ducks” in a new pandemic if the government didn’t do more to invest in preparedness.
She pointed to the government’s decision to “disband” tracking systems – including its “gold standard” Covid survey, the last remaining system used to monitor infections – as a sign that the country would not be fully prepared for a another pandemic.
write in The Independent, she described these surveillance systems as “crucial” in identifying new variants, tracking the number of cases and helping the UK to combat any virus spread. She added: “We have learned time and time again that we need to carefully monitor this virus to determine if current vaccine recommendations are sufficient.”
She added: “Without more concerted efforts to work together and invest in pandemic preparedness, we are sitting ducks for the next virus.”
‘Nothing has changed’
Some experts have also pointed to the issue of covid testing labs being mothballed and plan to sell the UK’s future vaccine manufacturing and research lab – the UK Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Center – before it even opens.
Also, after a year of record A&E waits, ambulance delays and growing waiting lists, there are fears the NHS is now in a worse position to fight a pandemic than it looks. was when Covid hit three years ago.
Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the government, who led the 2006 research that closely predicted the Covid pandemic, said the world would likely see another virus outbreak of the same magnitude within the next 15 years.
He said The Independent: “We are in the same position as in 2020. Nothing has changed…if anything has gotten worse.”
Sir David said the government had failed to invest in the NHS and was ‘without question’ he was in ‘a worse position than he was three years ago’.
The former government adviser added that by not funding the health service or building Britain’s capacity to respond to another pandemic, the government is “discounting the future”.
“That’s what the 2020 pandemic proved: that we had jettisoned all the processes that would have handled the outbreak. I don’t see any sign of it reversing at the moment,” he said.
“If you wait for the next epidemic, which I think is where the government could be now – if you wait for the next vaccine to be developed, whatever the disease, it will take months and months for this vaccine is coming. We can’t count on that. We will have very many cases, it will get really out of control again, and then we will have hospitals completely overwhelmed by an epidemic of this type. »
Lose ground
Professor Peter Horby, head of the groundbreaking Covid Recovery trial and director of the Pandemic Sciences Institute, also warned that the UK would be ill-prepared if a new pandemic were to strike in the years to come.
The Oxford professor said that despite government support for science during Covid, divestment has since meant the UK is “losing ground”. He claimed researchers in the Covid Recovery trial – which was launched in 2020 and identified four treatments for the disease – must rely on philanthropic funds because there is no sustained investment.
“There have been some good strategic moves on the part of the British government [in response to the pandemic]but I have been disappointed with what has happened since then,” he said.
“What we have seen is that there has been a halt to funding for some of the crown jewels of the UK response, like the ONS survey, like the Covid Geonomics Consortium, like the Recovery trial … the mothballing of the [Covid lab] facilities.
“Instead of relying on successes, [the government has] dismantles the successes, and I find that to be a potential risk for the future.
He added: ‘We may be back in the position that we saw ourselves in 2020, where we have a new threat and we don’t have the diagnostics, the drugs, the vaccine or the surveillance capabilities that we would like. . ”
The Department of Health and Social Care has been approached for comment.