In conversation with World Health Organization (WHO) expert advisor Prof. David Heymann, Medical News Today heard about his past experiences with SARS and MERS, what individuals can do to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, and how long he expects the pandemic to last.
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In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, expert advisors are urging countries to take measures to slow down the spread of the infection.
One of these experts is Prof. David Heymann from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom.
An infectious disease specialist, Prof. Heymann’s career has seen him working across the globe on Ebola, polio, smallpox, and a host of other infectious diseases. He is also no stranger to coronaviruses.
Medical News Today spoke to Prof. Heymann about the lessons experts have learned from past coronavirus outbreaks, what people need to know about the current pandemic, and what it really means to have a mild case of COVID-19.
MNT: What were your roles during previous coronavirus health emergencies?
Prof. David Heymann: When SARS occurred, I was the executive director of the communicable diseases program at the WHO. In that capacity, I led the global response to the outbreak.
For the MERS coronavirus outbreak, I was working with Public Health England as the chairman of their advisory board, and I participated in two different missions to Saudi Arabia for outbreaks of MERS coronavirus.
And during this outbreak, I am chairing a group at WHO called the STAG-IH — the Scientific, Technical Advisory Group for Infectious Hazards. We are the group that supports the WHO in its risk assessment for infectious disease outbreaks. We just finished a meeting today looking at what’s going on in the world and talking with Executive Director of the Emergencies Program Mike Ryan about what we would suggest be done in the next few weeks.
“So in Italy, for example, we’re seeing people die because they can’t access hospitals because there is not sufficient surge capacity. Hopefully, that same thing won’t happen in other European countries.”
MNT: Do you feel that the lessons learned during SARS and MERS, as well as Ebola, have helped prepare the world sufficiently to respond to the current pandemic?
Prof. David Heymann: Well, it certainly has prepared countries in Asia. Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea are doing quite an impressive job in getting the outbreaks under control in their countries by making sure that they don’t have a surge of patients to hospitals and ensuring that they have a very low case fatality ratio.
Western countries are doing less well. Except for Canada, they didn’t have SARS or MERS outbreaks, and they didn’t heed the warnings to take the necessary preparedness measures.
And though many of them had exercises and activities to prepare them, what they haven’t done is built the capacity to deal with a surge of patients who require ventilation. So in Italy, for example, we’re seeing people die because they can’t access hospitals because there is not sufficient surge capacity. Hopefully, that same thing won’t happen in other European countries.
MNT: How challenging is it for people like yourself, but also governments who come up with public health recommendations and strategies, to work during a pandemic?
Prof. David Heymann: It’s very easy for individual countries to make recommendations based on national risk assessment, and they are able to obtain much of the evidence required from materials in the public domain. What is less easy is for the WHO to convince countries to have a more uniform response.
And so each country has a different response to this outbreak, based on their own risk assessment and the capacities that they have to deal with outbreaks.
MNT: Do you feel that with the information that governments are giving out and the WHO are publishing on different forums every day, the general public has a good understanding of the implications of the pandemic? Or is thi