Pharma innovation is necessary to solve.
Roberts 21, citing Prof. Peter Piot, director of the UK’s London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. (Joanna, 6-24-2021, "How we prepare for an ‘age of pandemics’", Horizon, https://ec.europa.eu/research-and-innovation/en/horizon-magazine/how-we-prepare-age-pandemics)
‘It is likely that we are entering an age of pandemics,’ said Prof. Peter Piot, director of the UK’s London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who co-discovered the Ebola virus in 1976 and is now special advisor to the president of the European Commission on Covid-19.
He told the audience of researchers, policymakers and industry players that while he believes the risk of zoonoses – infectious diseases that cross from animals to humans – and pandemics will increase, the past year has shown the value of investing in research and innovation. He particularly singled out the value of basic research, with vaccines being developed in record time based on mRNA technology that has been decades in the making.
‘One of the silver linings of this pandemic has been the formidable impact of research and innovation,’ he said. ‘mRNA (vaccines) didn’t fall out of the sky; they are the result of decades of basic research.’