Writing a new chapter on trust: my interview with Peter Piot

Last week I had the pleasure of welcoming Peter Piot, the former director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, U. of London and former UNAIDS executive director, to EMA’s offices in Amsterdam to talk about learnings from the #pandemic, crisis preparedness, the rise of #LongCovid, and the role of trust in our societies.

As executive director of the European Medicines Agency , I worked very closely with Peter on a weekly, and sometimes daily, basis through the pandemic. As the Chief Scientific Advisor to the President of the European Commission , Peter was the voice of science, offering calm advice to policymakers during the crisis.?In the science and public health community, Peter doesn’t need an introduction, because his background speaks for itself.

As a microbiologist and physician, he has spent his life unravelling the mystery of viral diseases. He is best known for his ground breaking research into #Ebola, a virus he helped to discover in 1976, leading efforts to contain the first-ever Ebola epidemic that same year. He became a pioneering researcher into #HIV in the 1980s, working at the forefront of the fight against #AIDS in Kenya and Zaire, and was the co-leader of the first international AIDS research programme. So, in terms of real-world experience, there is no one better to have in the room during a health crisis of this nature.

However, our interview explored his firsthand experience of #COVID19 on two fronts. The first was a personal story about his infection and hospitalization with the virus in London, which he shared with the media and which consequently “went viral” - his words, not mine. The second: his post-viral journey with Long Covid,?a condition which now affects the lives of more than 17 million citizens in the European region, according to the World Health Organization .

On the topic of Long Covid, I asked him about the learning curve health systems are on; while there are ongoing research initiatives taking place across the Atlantic the question is always: what are we doing in Europe? We talked about how to bring European institutions and member states together around this public health challenge.

As my colleague, Marco Cavaleri , EMA’s Head of Health Threats and Vaccines Strategy observed, our understanding of Long Covid requires large scale, well-designed, clinical trials and observational studies that can tell us what is effective, both in terms of preventing the occurrence, but also in treating the condition. On this front, we certainly need to continue our dialogue with developers of products, to understand how to design clinical studies?with large cohorts of patients. There is a lot more to be done.

In the final pages of Peter’s 2012 book No Time To Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses, he gave a prescient assessment of our preparedness for an ‘airborne #influenza virus different from the ones we have been exposed to,?maybe produced to nature by animals.’ I asked him what new chapter, if any, he would add to his book, based on his personal experiences and our Covid learnings.

“I would add a chapter on a combination of lessons learned and include something on the trust we need as the foundation of everything we do, or can do, in society when we are faced with epidemics,” he said.?“I’ve learned that it’s not about viruses, it’s about people: there’s technology and preparedness, but it’s also about people in society.”