For our June meeting Dr Marion Watson from Imperial College came to speak to us about pandemics through history. Marion was part of the team who worked on the Astra Zeneca vaccine during the Covid Pandemic.
Her talk was peppered with interesting tidbits of information about pandemics, from plagues to Covid, and how they’ve affected people down the centuries. Did you know that Ian Dury, of The Blockheads fame, probably caught Polio from a swimming pool in High Wycombe, or that Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome virus (MERS) can be spread by camels?
She went on to tell us about the wonderful work being done on vaccines by Oxford and other universities in the UK and around the world. They’re currently working on vaccines for the top 10 diseases on the World Health Organisation’s list of infections which could cause pandemics in future.
In closing, Marion was of the view that while there is a lot of work to be done to protect us in future we’re in a much better place than when Covid struck. The team’s aim is to be able to develop and rollout new vaccines within 100 days to fight future pandemics and I’m sure that we all wish them well with their endeavours.