The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing global health crisis have clearly highlighted the costs of extreme health emergencies. The risk of another pandemic is high.
In 2018, in an article for the World Health Organisation (WHO), Larry Summers and two distinguished public health scholars wrote that: ‘Few doubt that major epidemics and pandemics will strike again and few would argue that the world is adequately prepared’.1 Evidently, last year we were not prepared.