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Five years ago, we in the UK were in the false lull between the first wave of COVID and the second,

between the first variant and the second, between the first peak of COVID deaths and the second higher peak.

There wasn't a vaccine and we didn't know when we might get one.

Now all that's a memory.

But another deadly pathogen might pop up in 50 years

or it might be manifesting its early stages right now.

In the final part of our three-part mini-series, looking at how

resilient the UK might be in dealing with potential future crises, we're asking, how prepared

are we to deal with the next pandemic? Step inside the briefing room and together we'll find out.

Joining me in the briefing room to discuss all this,

a Dame Sarah Gilbert, Professor of Vaccinology at the Pandemic Sciences Institute, University of Oxford.

Sir Peter Horby, Professor of Emerging Infections and Global Health

and Director of the Pandemic Sciences Institute at the University of Oxford.

And Marik Pyrriss, Emeritus Professor of Virology of the School of Public Health at the

University of Hong Kong. Peter Holby, listeners will be wondering, what's the next COVID?

Or to put it another way, what is the community worried about now and what's being most closely

monitored?

We've got a lot of viruses that we worry about, but I think the big ones are the coronavirus,

so that's the family of viruses from which COVID came, but also, you know, influenza,

which I think many people think is a common or garden infection, but actually there's a huge range of flu viruses in animals. And sometimes they spread over into humans and cause pandemics and they can be very severe.

And over the last few years, we've seen an increasing diversity of some of those viruses in birds, but also affecting a range of mammals, which is worrying. So we're definitely

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