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Will there be another pandemic after covid-19 and are we prepared?

Covid-19 is responsible for the deaths of millions of people around the world, but researchers fear the next global outbreak could be even worse, making it vital that we start preparing for that unknown pathogen now

By Michael Le Page

1 January 2025

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

It has been just over five years since the beginning of covid-19

The coronavirus behind covid-19 has infected most people in the world, killing around 15 million people and leaving about 400 million individuals with long-term health problems. It also caused the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Despite all this, it could have been much more devastating.

“On the scale of pandemics, covid-19 was moderate,” says Mark Woolhouse at the University of Edinburgh, UK. “There will be others, and they very easily could be an awful lot worse than the one we had. This…

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