Dr. Tony Holohan:

They were different times. There are a couple of previous ones that we would point to. The last significant flu pandemic was the swine flu one in 2009-2010, but it was occurring against the background of a population where we had a certain amount of immune memory. There was some level of immunity within the population. We had some drugs available to us that could deal with influenza, Tamiflu and Relenza, and we also had influenza vaccines that were capable of being adapted quickly. From a standing start, we were in a very different position. In the coronavirus pandemic - this one - we had none of those kinds of features in place.

We did not know very much about it. While much work happened internationally around pandemic preparedness, much of the focus of that was on influenza - the presumption being that at some point we would see a much more severe, in terms of virulence, form of influenza such as the avian influenza that you might have heard of developing the potential to pass from human to human - but in the event we have seen a further coronavirus pandemic to add to the two that we have previously seen. We had the severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, in 2002-2002, but it did not have the transmission potential that this one had. It eventually disappeared in response to some of the measures that were put in place, principally in South-East Asia.