Preparing for future dangers
One way to make sure we are prepared for future problems is to create a better system to monitor health emergencies. The European Commission recently announced a new organization, the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority, or HERA. This group will help find and fund public and private sector activities, including late-stage development and manufacturing in life sciences. This could be just the structure we need in Europe to understand the risks, survey global health dangers, share technology and knowledge, and fix the supply chain problems.
We also should pay attention to the shortage of medical staff and infrastructure, which was the main reason for the pandemic lockdowns. The shortages had different causes in different countries, such as budget cuts or brain drain, and these issues need to be carefully addressed on local, European and global levels. Investments in medical education and hospital infrastructure are crucial to prevent future emergencies and the need for lockdowns that limit our freedoms and hurt the quality of life.
Many people ask us what the Bank is doing for the coronavirus variants. We are constantly reaching out to BioNTech and other biotechnology companies to get their thoughts on the variants. As soon as a variant emerges, these companies test their vaccines for efficacy against it. For the moment, it does not look like we need to tweak the vaccines or conduct a lot of new trials for the variants, but we will wait and see.
The main challenge now is making sure more people are vaccinated, which will reduce the chances for more powerful variants. Vaccination levels on a global level are low. We need to keep supporting organisations like COVAX, which supplies millions of vaccines to low-income areas of the globe. The Bank has pledged €600 million for COVAX, which is the largest amount of financing the Bank has approved for a global public health programme.
Over the next several years, it would be great to see an explosion in investment for scientific research and innovation coming from the broader life sciences, as well as more support for medical education and healthcare. There are many health problems that need to be solved besides COVID-19. We need to support out-of-the-box thinking and take more leaps of faith. As scientists, this new appetite for risk excites us and makes our hearts beat faster. This will make the world a better place and save us from future crises that we cannot even imagine yet.