COMMENT | When Professor Sarah Gilbert, Saïd Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Oxford, and one of the scientists behind the AstraZeneca vaccine warned of a worse pandemic heading towards us next, I doubt many people cared.

With the new Omicron variant causing panic across the world and the number of new cases with this new variant being detected on the rise, we are just simply left wondering what is next.

Haven’t we faced the worst yet?

It doesn’t help when scientists, the World Health Organisation and even vaccine manufacturers start issuing conflicting statements that only serve to confuse the layman.

Are the two doses of Sinovac followed by the Pfizer booster shot enough to keep me safe from big bad Covid-19?

I hope so. I am pretty sure everyone else in my situation is thinking the same thing.

Quickly and quietly

When the world was informed of a possible pandemic stemming from several strange flu-like cases that were linked to a market selling exotic meat in Wuhan in December 2019, few people took it seriously. Things changed in the next couple of months.

Major outbreaks before this, such as...