What have you learned about illness through COVID-19, and how should the world get ready for pandemics in the future, in your opinion?
After COVID, we must strive for a better, safer, and more equitable world. We must structure our societies to reduce the factors that increase the likelihood and severity of pandemics, such as overcrowding, marginalization, and inequity. Last but not least, we must protect the health of our planet by addressing climate change, the plight of the animal kingdom, and the destruction of our forests.
What can the scientific community learn from COVID-19 about collaborating and cooperating to achieve goals?
As we launched the R&D Plan in the first week of January 2020, the scientific community immediately banded together, responded to the call from WHO, and labored diligently while exchanging ideas, information, and discoveries in real solidarity. We now have effective diagnostic tools, knowledge of effective therapies, and, of course, vaccines as the fruit of this togetherness. We now have a second window of chance thanks to vaccines to control the epidemic. It must not be wasted.
If we truly work together- build on the solidarity so many have shown, we will beat this together. But we are at a critical juncture, much depends on staying the course and working together- and continuing to apply the traditional public health measures while rolling out the vaccines, fairly, and appropriately to the highest risk groups first, in every country on the planet.
