Four years after the beginning of the pandemic, we need to be ready for the next one, according to Professor Luke O’Neill. 

January 11th, 2020, marked the first reported death of someone from COVID-19 in Wuhan, China.  

“It seems like yesterday, but it also seems like decades ago when that first fatality was reported,” Prof O’Neill told Show Me the Science. 

“Over that time, we’ve learned so much... even if I’m not banging on about it in the media, there are still developments.” 

He noted the upcoming COVID inquiry will figure out what the Government did right, what it did wrong, and what it should do in the event of another pandemic. 

“We have grounds for optimism should there be another pandemic, which there might be,” he said. 

"It's bound to crop up."

Reasons to be optimistic

One reason to be optimistic, according to Prof O’Neill, is the World Health Organisation announcing the vaccine saved 1.4 million people in Europe. 

“Imagine there’s a war going on and the enemy has a weapon that’s going to kill millions of people, but I have a weapon that will stop it – that's what the vaccine,” he said. 

He also said there are multiple “therapeutic” medicines that can treat those who end up in hospital with COVID. 

Dexamethasone, Paxlovid, and antibodies are now among the successful COVID-19 treatments.  

Meanwhile, two drugs, Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, were “touted as being great” initially but were found to be useless in treating COVID-19. 

Pandemic 'unknowns'

Amidst discoveries, Prof O’Neill acknowledged there are also plenty of “unknowns” about the pandemic. 

“One big unknown is will the virus change and become nastier,” he said. 

“Now we know the immune system will probably still stop you from getting severe disease even if a new variant crops up. 

“You might catch it and get sniffles, but your immune system will stop it from descending into severe disease.” 

He said it’s important to know what measures worked and what didn’t in the previous pandemic. 

“We’ll make a vaccine really quickly,” he said. “We can make it in three to six months now which is tremendous. 

“We give out masks, effective masks like m95 do actually work. 

“We’ll look at ventilation to make sure it’s up to scratch in schools and hospitals and businesses.” 

As of December 2023, there had been 1.7 million COVID-19 cases since the pandemic started, with 68,000 hospitalisations and 9,300 deaths.