Home Health Former Covid chief Sir John Bell warns another pandemic will ‘definitely happen’ and says coronavirus could have been ‘much worse’

Former Covid chief Sir John Bell warns another pandemic will ‘definitely happen’ and says coronavirus could have been ‘much worse’

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Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, said it was

Brits need to “get used to” the fact that “another pandemic is definitely going to happen”, according to one of the UK’s leading experts.

Sir John Bell, who served as Boris Johnson’s testing tsar during Covid, said it was “inconceivable” the country would not face another “major event”.

Addressing MPs who sit on the Health and Social Care Committee, he argued there was a “20 to 30 per cent chance” of another pandemic occurring within 20 years.

Sir John, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, also admitted that Covid itself could have been “much worse”.

He told the inquiry that if the Omicron variant, which did not emerge until November 2021, had been the initial strain, “the whole system would have collapsed”.

Former Covid chief Sir John Bell warns another pandemic will

Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, said it was “inconceivable” that the country would not face another “major event”. Addressing the Health and Social Care Committee, he argued there was a “20 to 30 per cent chance” of a pandemic occurring in the next 20 years.

Former Covid chief Sir John Bell warns another pandemic will

Former Covid chief Sir John Bell warns another pandemic will

Sir John, who served as Boris Johnson’s Covid testing tsar during the pandemic, also admitted the virus could have been “much worse”. Pictured is Sir John after being made a Companion of Honor during an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle in December.

Asked by Conservative MP Greg Clark yes another’“This is going to happen at some point,” Sir John interjected. “I’d bet my house on it.”

The Canadian-born immunologist added: “Everyone should get used to that.”

‘The real question is: what is the probability of that happening in the short term?

“It will undoubtedly happen in the medium or long term.

“We are doing a lot of things that are very high risk and climate change is not going to help because insects are moving everywhere.”

‘Some of the best estimates suggest there is a 20 or 30 per cent chance of having another pandemic in the next 15 or 20 years. That’s a big number.

“Now, whether it’s a really deep pandemic or one that’s not that bad, I think we have to wait and see, but it seems inconceivable to me that we won’t have another big event.”

Sir John was also a member of the Government’s Vaccine Task Force expert advisory group, set up to accelerate research into producing a Covid vaccine.

He was among those who helped negotiate the deal with pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca to produce the Oxford vaccine, which is estimated to have saved more than six million lives worldwide in the first year of its rollout.

He told MPs the Covid pandemic could have been “much worse” as the proportion of infected people who died was low compared to what might have been expected for respiratory viruses.

Sir John said: ‘Case fatality rates of one per cent or less from respiratory viral infections… For people who have lost loved ones, that is a disaster.

“But to be clear, from a social standpoint, that’s not so bad.”

For example, SARS had a case fatality rate of around 10 percent.

If the Omicron variant had been the initial strain, instead of Wuhan, there would have been five times as many deaths and “the whole system would have collapsed,” he warned.

Later, however, he admitted he was “disappointed” by the UK’s Covid inquiry and its failure to address the “really serious details of the science underpinning” the pandemic.

He said: I’m a little disappointed by the investigation and where it has come so far. I was hoping it would get us to a position where we understood what we did right and what we did wrong in the last pandemic.

‘But also what we could do to address the future challenges posed by infectious disease pandemics.

Sir John was also a member of the Government's Vaccine Task Force expert advisory group, set up to accelerate research into producing a Covid vaccine. He was among those who helped negotiate the deal with pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca to produce the Oxford vaccine, which is estimated to have saved more than six million lives worldwide in the first year of its rollout. Here, Sir John is made a Companion of Honor by King Charles III at Windsor Castle in December.

Sir John was also a member of the Government's Vaccine Task Force expert advisory group, set up to accelerate research into producing a Covid vaccine. He was among those who helped negotiate the deal with pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca to produce the Oxford vaccine, which is estimated to have saved more than six million lives worldwide in the first year of its rollout. Here, Sir John is made a Companion of Honor by King Charles III at Windsor Castle in December.

Sir John was also a member of the Government’s Vaccine Task Force expert advisory group, set up to accelerate research into producing a Covid vaccine. He was among those who helped negotiate the deal with pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca to produce the Oxford vaccine, which is estimated to have saved more than six million lives worldwide in the first year of its rollout. Here, Sir John is made a Companion of Honor by King Charles III at Windsor Castle in December.

‘We haven’t really gotten there. Frankly, it seems more like a program for the legal profession to me, because I don’t think we’ve gotten into any of the really serious details of the science behind it.

He added: ‘There has been a lot of discussion about the process. One of the implicit outcomes was that if we have another pandemic, it might be good to have a different team at number 10.

‘I’m not sure how that’s useful. “I just don’t think that’s really going to make a difference.”

comes as Sir Jeremy Farrar, an influential member of SAGE — The No10 advisory panel told the Covid Inquiry last year that another pandemic is “inevitable”.

Giving evidence at a distance he said: ‘It is clear that we live in an era of pandemic, which will have more frequent and more complex pandemics.

“And yet it is extraordinarily difficult, when governments are faced with day-to-day challenges, to also put in place those critical infrastructure, resilience and surge capacity and excess capacity, that would allow us to cope with the unexpected, but inevitable. disturbances that are going to occur.”

Sir Jeremy, who now works for the World Health Organization as its the chief scientist, leaving SAGE during the pandemic after condemning the country’s laissez-faire response.

He also co-authored a book titled ‘Spike: The Virus v The People’ which gives his ‘inside story’ of how the crisis unfolded.

He told the inquiry: “I think in the UK and around the world, despite warnings over the last 20 years, there has been a complacency about the need to prepare for these kinds of major disruptive events that go far beyond of health in general. of the society.

“And the UK, yes, was accommodating about planning for it.”

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