Sir Jeremy Farrar: 'I do believe there will be a vaccine' in 2020 and 2021
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2020
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Amid the talk of spikes and second waves one thing is clear – people predicting an early end to the coronavirus pandemic are indulging in wishful thinking. Can we find a way of living with Covid-19 that respects the science while mitigating the damage being done to our economic and social lives? Stephen Sackur speaks to Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust and a key scientific adviser to the UK government. How dangerous is the moment we’re in?
(Photo: Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today is one of the UK's |
| 0:06.3 | foremost experts on infectious diseases. Sir Jeremy Farrah has been involved in efforts to combat |
| 0:12.7 | and eradicate global threats to human health for some four decades, taking in HIV-AIDS, SARS, |
| 0:19.7 | bird flu, and now COVID-19. He is director of the Welcome Trust, |
| 0:25.6 | a major backer of scientific research here in the UK. He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory |
| 0:33.0 | Group on Emergencies, Sage, which has been advising the Boris Johnson government on its response to |
| 0:39.9 | the pandemic. With more than 46,000 COVID deaths and more than 300,000 cases, the UK's record |
| 0:47.8 | puts it close to the bottom of the European League table. The chorus of demands for an official |
| 0:53.8 | inquiry as to why is growing. But perhaps even |
| 0:57.4 | more pressing is getting the COVID response right now. The infection spreading fast in many |
| 1:04.2 | parts of the world and shows signs of re-emerging in countries which appeared to have it under control. |
| 1:09.6 | There are conflicts between the caution |
| 1:12.0 | of scientists and the eagerness of politicians to mitigate the economic and social damage done |
| 1:18.3 | by draconian restrictions. Are we getting the balance right? Well, Sir Jeremy Farrah joins me now. |
| 1:25.2 | Welcome to Hard Talk. Pleasure. Governments around the world have had |
| 1:28.8 | pretty much six months now to figure out how to get control of COVID-19. How do you think they're doing? |
| 1:36.1 | I think we face enormous challenges. We've got a virus which came across from animals into humans, |
| 1:42.2 | maybe sometime in 2019, maybe before that, to which none of us |
| 1:46.7 | have any immunity. We have no treatments, no vaccines, no diagnostic when it happened. And it's |
| 1:52.1 | very, very transmissible. It goes from me to you very easily. And so spread around the world |
| 1:57.3 | in, what, 100 days? And it was essentially in every country. So I think we face an enormous challenge. In fact, I don't believe the world really has come to understand |
| 2:05.2 | the threat that we continue to face. And isn't that the problem? Because I mentioned this six months, |
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