World leaders could have cut the length of the Covid outbreak by three months if they had collaborated on vaccines, testing and drugs, Tony Blair has claimed as he launched a report on preparing for the next deadly pandemic. “Had there been global coordination a year ago, I think we could have shaved at least three months off this virus,” Blair told the Guardian in an interview. “The time that it’s taken for us to identify the virus, to develop a vaccine and to get it into production and distribution has been roughly, 15 months. Now, in a rational world you would have been repurposing some of that bioreactor capacity to accelerate the production of vaccine. I used to say to people, you know, your average supermarket’s got more information on you than the government’s got.”

Source: The Guardian February 26, 2021 06:00 UTC