“Signals” from bird flu suggest that the next global pandemic could arrive sooner than expected.
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”.