Expert calls for future pandemic planning amid ‘signals’ from bird flu

Professor Devi Sridhar said preparations were needed in case of future disease outbreaks.

Preparations are needed in the wake of Covid for the next possible pandemic, public health expert Professor Devi Sridhar has said (Peter Byrne/PA)

Preparations are needed for future pandemics, a public health expert has said, amid concerns about the “signals” from bird flu.

Professor Devi Sridhar of Edinburgh University, who advised the Scottish Government during the coronavirus outbreak, said action was needed to avoid a repeat of that, describing it as a “tragedy for lives lost but also the restrictions put in place”.

More than 17,000 Scots who died had coronavirus listed on their death certificate, meaning the virus either caused their death or contributed to it.

Prof Sridhar, whose has written a book called Preventable: How a Pandemic Changed the World and How to Stop the Next One, was asked about future disease outbreaks when she appeared at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

She said: “In terms of the next one, we can’t say what it is but there are signals.”

Speaking about bird flu, she said it was “not good” that the disease was now endemic in the wild bird population, with this resulting in flocks of birds such as chickens and turkeys “in lockdown because we can’t protect them without putting them inside”.

Prof Sridhar added: “We have enough signals to say there is a pattern emerging and that pattern isn’t good in terms of the range of mutations we’re seeing and it jumping into humans at some point, or other mammals that make the jump easier into humans.

“So we have to prepare – to avoid what happened, which was a tragedy for lives lost but also the restrictions put in place which harmed, as well, many people in terms of their livelihoods, mental health.”

The question is how the next time do we reduce the lives lost and the impositions put on people’s lives, and the cost to the economy and mental health, that should be where we’re at

Professor Devi Sridhar

Prof Sridha explained she had written her book “partly for closure for me of what was a very difficult couple of years for the whole world” but also to capture the experience.

After the 1918 flu pandemic, she said that there had not been “much written afterwards”, saying that “people just wanted to move forward”, but she had written her book on the coronavirus outbreak because she “thought before we move forward we need to remember and capture that”.

However, she said that time has been “wasted” during Covid with Government leaders and health experts debating if action was necessary.

Prof Sridhar explained this was because coronavirus “hit that sweet spot” between being “innocuous enough to live with”, with some people infected not having any symptoms, while also being “dangerous enough to kill millions of people and hospitalise tens of millions” across the globe.

“It had those characteristics of being asymptomatic in some people, and then killing others in their 20s, 30s,” Prof Sridhar said.

“It was a very tricky one.

“I felt we wasted so much time in circles debating, ‘is the fatality rate 1% or 3% or 0.1%’, instead of actually working together and saying, ‘how do we contain this until we have vaccines, antivirals (and) doctors understand more about this disease’.

“That, for me, should have been the focus.”

She continued: “We spent a lot of debating is Covid worse than the restrictions – they’re both bad.

“The question is how the next time do we reduce the lives lost and the impositions put on people’s lives, and the cost to the economy and mental health, that should be where we’re at.”