"The real debate should be about vaccination - the only real long-term measure that will work from everyone. There is a terrible irony in the fact that the growth in scientirfic research and technology now means we can engineer a vaccine agaisnt a new strain in weeks, and yet it can't actually happen.

There are only a handful of factories worldwide capable of manufacturing such a vaccine and they cannot make more than 300 million shots in a year, compared with the several billion that are needed (Jo Revill, writing in The Obvserver today, 16th Oct.)

Basically it's a matter of a system in which drug development and production are geared to making profit rather than meeting need. It doesn't have to be that way.