HYDERABAD : Several experts and leaders like Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, had announced that the threat of covid-19 has receded.
However, others, including the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics in the US, have warned that the world will see another pandemic—only that the pathogen will be a different one.
Two years into the pandemic, experts remain divided on this perplexing question: what’s next? It is eerie, but in recent history, and noticeably after the Second World War, we have seen pandemics surface almost every 10 years: the Asian flu, the Hong Kong flu, cholera, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), HIV/AIDS, swine flu, middle east respiratory syndrome (MERS), ebola and then the deadly covid-19.
Given the frequency and the almost predictable return of strange new pathogens, pandemics are clearly no black swan events and therefore health systems must be prepared for the next.