TRANSCRIPT
For some it may feel like yesterday, for others, a lifetime ago.
Officially it's five years. On March 11, 2020, COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic
Seven million deaths have been reported to the WHO but it estimates at least 20 million lives were lost.
While the virus continues to circulate, vaccines as well as immunity from infections, have led to a significant decrease in hospitalisations and deaths.
Five years on, COVID-19 has become endemic on every continent
Today, health experts are shifting their focus to the prospect of a new pandemic.
Professor Paul Kelly - Australia's former top doctor - helped steer Australia's COVID-19 public health response
“I do worry about global preparedness, and I think one of the key lessons from the Covid pandemic was that we were not prepared as much as we thought we were. There was a tendency for us to hide behind our border and to ignore the rest of the world. And Australia can be counted in that unfortunate statistic as well.”
He believes another pandemic is "inevitable" as do other infectious disease experts who are monitoring an outbreak of a mysterious viral disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Associate Professor Sanjaya Senanayake [[Sena-nih-kah]], an infectious Diseases Specialist at the Australia National University says there is also concern for a strain of avian influenza, also known as as the bird flu, which has
spilled over into humans.
“We are seeing so many new infections appear, and right now in the US they've got a strain of avian influenza, which we are keeping a very close eye on, which has the potential to turn into a pandemic. So yeah, there are lots of infections out there, lots of new ones emerging from the animal world to the human world. And it's very likely that one of those will be the candidate, the most likely candidate for the next pandemic.”
One of the recommendations from the 2024 independent review into Australia's COVID response was to establish a Centre for Disease Control
A permanent facility has yet to be established.
“I still feel that that's got a way to go in terms of fulfilling its mandate but the mandate is there and it's funded and improving national data, improving networks nationally and internationally, and having a much smarter approach to communications about a lot of these issues now rather than having to invent them on the run as it were, as we did last time. So I think that's got enormous potential and we need to really support that idea.”
Professor Kelly is concerned too about the erosion of public trust. He worries people may not accept another vaccine program.
“Trust is hard to win and easy to lose. And I think that will be a major issue for us going to the next pandemic. The Australian public was enormously trusting of medical advice and the politicians that were in charge at the national and the state and territory level. I'm not sure that that's the case now.”
