EXTRA: Future Covid-19 scenarios: how can the world meet long-term threats?

Inside Briefing with the Institute for Government

Institute for Government

News, Politics, Government

4.6 • 252 Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2021

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Covid-19 will top the agenda at this month's G7 summit in Cornwall. As some countries lift restrictions and near the completion of vaccine rollouts, others face severe outbreaks or progress being derailed by new variants. No country will escape from the Covid crisis alone – a coordinated global plan which covers vaccination, surveillance and health infrastructure is essential. To discuss how world leaders can meet these challenges and put in place long-term plans for handling the threat of Covid-19, this Institute for Government event saw an expert panel draw on a series of roundtables organised by the IfG and Wellcome Trust. Our panel included: Tom Whipple, Science Editor, The Times Sir Suma Chakrabarti, former Permanent Secretary, DfID and the Ministry of Justice, and incoming chair of the Overseas Development Institute. President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development from 2012–20 Dame Una O’Brien, former Permanent Secretary, UK Department of Health; Member of Council, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Professor Gagandeep Kang, Professor in the Department of Gastrointestinal Sciences, Christian Medical College, India and Fellow of the Royal Society. The event was chaired by Alex Thomas, Programme Director at the Institute for Government. #IfGG7 We would like to thank Wellcome Trust for kindly supporting this event. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this Institute for Government event on future COVID-19 scenarios.
0:16.0	I'm Alex Thomas, I'm a program director at the Institute for Government. We're really pleased to produce this event in partnership with the Welcome Trust.
0:25.6	G7 leaders are gathering on the north coast of Cornwall.
0:30.6	The British weather is putting on a show at the moment at least,
0:34.6	but there won't be much time for them to paddle or to fight off the seagulls.
0:40.1	COVID-19 will and should be top of the minds of the G7 leaders amongst everything else that
0:46.7	they are concerned about. Some countries are lifting restrictions, some are well-ahead-on
0:53.0	vaccine deployment, others have barely started.
0:56.2	And some countries are heading back or in the middle of severe outbreaks. So at the top of the
1:03.4	list for the G7 will be discussing a global response to the pandemic crisis. Over the last month, we in the Institute for Government,
1:13.3	working with colleagues at Welcome, have gathered first scientists together to get a handle
1:20.9	on the future scenarios for how this virus might develop. There was optimism and pessimism, optimism about vaccine deployment,
1:32.3	pessimism about new variants and their transmissibility and their virulence.
1:39.3	After that discussion, we then brought policy experts together to identify the sorts of responses that G7 leaders should be thinking about based on the science.
1:49.6	And they focused on, among many other things, vaccine sharing as by far the most significant intervention that political leaders could make, increase surveillance and a more global effort on outbreak resilience.
2:05.4	We've produced a very short paper out today summarising this, so a plug for that.
2:10.5	It's on the IFG website.
2:12.8	And we're also delighted to bring this event to you today to explore some of those themes in more detail.
2:20.0	We've got a hand-picked panel here today representing the scientists, the policy experts,
2:27.1	and we've also added in a top science journalist for good measure. I'll introduce them in a
2:34.0	minute, but before I do, the first of many
2:35.7	plugs for questions. You should be able to see the Q&A icon on your screens, really keen after
	...

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