Professor Nigel McMillan from Infectious Diseases and Immunology at Menzies Health Institute Queensland, spoke about the future of Covid-19 earlier this year, as part of the Gold Coast University Hospital’s 2021 Grand Rounds.
He discussed the way in which COVID-19 started, with a few strange respiratory illnesses in Wuhan China just 14 months ago to a full-blown pandemic with over 2 million deaths worldwide today.
Professor McMillan says it has fundamentally changed the world with the response to control being highly varied from strict lockdowns of whole cities and states, to relaxed social distancing and a reliance on public buy-in on compliance.
The research effort in the last 12 months, he says, has been spectacular, with more than 70 vaccines in current clinical trial and a large range of therapeutic modalities tested or used.
On the Gold Coast alone, there are a wide range of COVID-related research projects from economic analysis, mental health research, to drug screens and novel genetic therapies.
As we now enter a phase of population-wide vaccination, Professor McMillan acknowledges there are several questions still open as to how much this will address the current situation.
In his recorded video of the session, he provides a wide-ranging review of COVID-19 to bring participants up to date on all things COVID-19.
