In their review in Science, Edwards et al. are correct to attribute much of the success experienced in the past two years in anti-viral and vaccine development for the Covid-19 pandemic to years of investment in basic and applied research.

Much of this prior work focussed on non-coronaviruses like HIV and HCV, but very important work was done on the epidemic-associated coronaviruses SARS and MERS.

The authors also point out how important It is to maintain strong ongoing capabilities in infectious diseases research, including public health, diagnostics, vaccines and drug discovery, to enable the biomedical community to react quickly and effectively to the next pandemic.

For New Zealand the need for increased investment in infectious diseases research is clear.

Where I differ somewhat with the authors is that I don't think it's practical or wise to have the goal of immediately pre-targeting all viruses that have pandemic potential in order to pre-develop vaccines and drugs against all of them just in case they are needed to address a potential pandemic at some future date. To me this would represent a phenomenal amount of work and it seems a bridge too far. Funding this effort would risk diluting important efforts in other key areas in infectious diseases like antimicrobial resistance as well as other areas of biomedical sciences.