Top Hong Kong scientists join pandemic research alliance

Top scientists from Hong Kong and worldwide are joining forces under a new alliance to tackle the next global pandemic, with a renowned virologist behind the project warning that more viruses might make the jump from animals to humans, writes Sammy Heung for South China Morning Post.

Columbia University’s Professor David Ho told the Post that the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and Beijing’s Tsinghua University had given their blessing to the plan to build a “Pandemic Research Alliance”.

The scholar, who is acclaimed for discovering the efficacy of a cocktail antiretroviral treatment for Aids, on 15 July said he was in talks with the University of Melbourne about joining the alliance. “We want to define what are the most important viral threats for pandemics, such as what we went through with coronaviruses, influenza viruses and what we call paramyxoviruses,” he said. “All of these could be easily transmitted from person to person via the respiratory route and therefore could spread very quickly.”
Full report on the South China Morning Post site