With unprecedented efforts and resources put behind the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, there are good reasons to believe that one will be discovered. But even once such a vaccine is discovered, a very large part of the population will need to make use of it for the virus to die out.

Barbara sustained a lumbar vertebral fracture aged 76 and was referred for a fracture and falls risk assessment. Her bone mineral density (BMD) was above the World Health Organisation (WHO) cut-off for diagnosing osteoporosis, and she was informed that she did not have osteoporosis. In line with international guidance, however, a drug treatment for osteoporosis was recommended. She decided not to take it.

Virologist Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, fell ill with COVID-19 in mid-March. He spent a week in a hospital and has been recovering at his home in London since. Climbing a flight of stairs still leaves him breathless.

We have been preparing for COVID-19 but just didn’t know it. While not explicitly designed for this pandemic, key healthcare advances like remote care, home care and pharmaceutical innovation now put our health ecosystem in the position of scaling solutions that would not have been possible otherwise.

The New Social Contract: Empowering individuals in a transitioning world, a global survey report published by Aegon in 2019, identifies people’s top four current life priorities as: being healthy and fit (62%), enjoying life (59%), planning for their financial future (49%), and focusing on family (45%). Since the end of last year, the entire world has been upended by COVID-19.