Support researchers or risk academic ‘brain drain’ post Covid, warns leading Oxford expert

UK’s science sector needs to capitalise on new interest and offer people ‘opportunities to be more involved in infectious diseases research,’ Sir Professor Peter Horby tells Samuel Lovett

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A leading expert from the University of Oxford has warned of the prospect of an academic “brain drain” in the wake of the Covid pandemic if more is not done to support scientists with their research.

Sir Professor Peter Horby said it was vital to “capitalise” on the interest among young scientists who have shifted their focus to infectious diseases and global health during the course of the past 18 months.

Otherwise, he warned, these individuals will “drift back to other areas of work”, jeopardising the knowledge and expertise that has been acquired throughout the pandemic.

“There’s a huge number of people who were not involved in infectious diseases and outbreaks previously,” he told The Independent.

“I’ve worked on epidemics for about 20 years but it was quite a niche activity and there were a few people who did it full time and a modest number of people who dabbled.

“Now there’s a huge number of people who have got interested. We need to really capitalise on that and offer them the opportunities to be more involved in infectious diseases research.”

Sir Peter, an epidemiologist and infectious diseases expert, said these scientists needed to be supported financially in their work too, adding that “rhetoric” and unfulfilled promises of investment into pandemic preparedness “don’t get us anywhere”.

I’ve worked on epidemics for about 20 years but it was quite a niche activity and there were a few people who did it full time and a modest number of people who dabbled

Sir Professor Peter Horby

Many UK-led research programmes investigating malaria, tuberculosis, HIV and other infectious diseases have been affected by cuts to the overseas aid budget made by the government earlier in the year.

A recent inquiry led by an all-party parliamentary group said that the decision to reduce the UK’s overseas aid budget, from 0.7 per cent of national income to 0.5 per cent, could “reverse decades of hard-won progress” in fighting HIV and other infections.

“Especially among the younger researchers, they’ll drift back to other areas of work if we don’t capitalise on their interest now,” said Sir Peter, who is also the inaugural director of Oxford University’s new Pandemic Sciences Centre.

“My experience of Sars 1 and bird flu outbreaks is there’s a lot of positive words said but the interest and funding fades quickly. What we’ve seen previously is a couple of years of investment and activity and then things are rapidly forgotten.

“This has been a different ball game, with a massive global impact, but people need to remember that the social health and economic costs of the pandemic have been absolutely astronomical.

“I know the coffers are empty to an extent, but there does need to be an investment right now to make sure we’re prepared to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

Sir Peter also cautioned against returning to the “overly complicated, slow, and extremely expensive landscape” of developing new drugs and vaccines, which, before Covid, often took years or even decades.

He said the response to Covid-19 showed that it is possible to adopt a quicker, better and more streamlined approach for tackling some of today’s most pressing health issues.

“The speed at which we evaluated new drugs, developed and evaluated new vaccines, set up contact tracing apps, all things like that, is light years ahead of what we were used to doing,” Sir Peter said.

His comments come as early trial data showed that a new antiviral drug, which can be taken as a pill, halves the risk of hospitalisation and death in patients recently infected by Covid.

The drug, named molnupiravir, has been lauded as game-changing, with scientists and clinicians hopeful that it could be used to prevent the escalation of serious disease among at-risk groups.

Sir Peter said it was a “really promising” development and indicated that he would like to assess the drug, manufactured by the German pharmaceutical Merck, as part of the UK’s Recovery trial.

The trial aims to identify drugs that could be used to treat adults admitted to hospital with Covid-19. It previously discovered that dexamethasone, a widely available steroid, reduces mortality in hospitalised patients.

“It’s a very promising result that could be very beneficial as obviously you want to stop developing Covid in the first place, and that’s difficult if your interventions are difficult to deliver, such as intravenous drugs,” he said.

Monoclonal antibodies can be used to treat people who are newly infected with Covid-19, but the treatment has to be inserted via a needle or tube into the blood, so isn’t as practical as taking a pill like molnupiravir.

“It’ll need to be studied in hospitalised patients too if we thought it’d benefit them,” said Sir Peter. “It’d be something that, based on what we’ve seen, we would be interested in looking at including in the Recovery trial.”

Also a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, Sir Peter said the success in evaluating or developing drugs such as dexamethasone and molnupiravir in a relatively short period of time showed that “things can be done differently and can be done better”.

“Why do we have to wait five to 10 years for new drugs for hypertension, diabetes or cancer? Why do we have to wait 10 to 20 years for new vaccines? Somehow we drifted into this overly complicated, slow, extremely expensive landscape which is really harming people’s health as they’re not getting access to good drugs as quickly as they should.

“That’s another lesson: we need to learn from what we’ve done well and change the systems to facilitate rapid and high-quality research.”