Covid-19: Where will we be a year from now?

Healix International/HX Global's Dr Adrian Hyzler talks:

• How the world will change in a year
• What Covid-19 means for business travel
• The outlook for a viable vaccine or treatment

Dr Adrian Hyzler, chief medical officer at Healix International/HX Global, looks ahead to how the world – and corporate travel – could be shaping up 12 months from now.

BTN Europe: What do you think the world will look like in a year with respect to COVID-19?

Dr Hyzler: A year from now the world will have re-opened in varying degrees. Restaurants and theatres will be open again but likely with diminished capacity. Sports may be played with smaller audiences, and we may see people having their temperature taken as they enter arenas. 

Public places will need to be very stringent in their commitment to disinfecting frequently and thoroughly. Offices may have a rotating schedule of remote work to reduce the number of people in enclosed spaces. 

There may be “point of contact” rapid diagnostic testing prior to entry to healthcare facilities, including nursing homes and other institutions where distancing is problematic – some companies may also choose to adopt this approach. This depends on accurate, affordable and simple-to-use test kits being mass produced. 

Companies may limit the number of people in meetings or depend more on virtual meeting tools. In turn, we may see less traffic, fewer motor vehicle accidents and less pollution. 

Duty of care will become more important than ever as organisations will need to provide their employees with critical resources to stay well both physically and mentally in the workplace and also where travel is concerned. 

BTN Europe: How will airlines and hotels get to grips with social distancing measures, and will these still be in place a year from now?

Dr Hyzler: While the world will re-open gradually in the months to come, social distancing will play a continued role to some degree. 

The travel industry has the toughest job in getting their businesses back up and running [in this environment]. Airlines may only allow one passenger at a time to get up inflight, cut out the in-flight meal, leave middle seats empty and run half-filled planes. 

But will there be the appetite for travel if there is a mandatory 14-day quarantine at either end, or even both ends? The other question is, how long can the airline industry afford to run half-filled planes? 

I think the ultimate solution to getting back to full occupancy is by performing point-of-care testing at the airport prior to departure. Eventually, there will be a rapid diagnostic test for the antigen that is affordable, quick, simple to use and accurate. 

There is research going on into a new swab that will allow the sample to be taken from just inside the nostril so that anyone can do it. That way confidence in a safe journey can be established, by excluding anyone who tests positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, even if asymptomatic. All crew will also be tested before every flight. 

The hotel industry will have less difficulty with maintaining social distancing but will need to make changes in their check-in process, their dining facilities, and the room-cleaning service. I envisage this going on for at least a year, as I do not expect that any potential vaccine programme will be up and running by then, and certainly not with the penetration required.

BTN Europe: How will companies deal with employee resistance to business travel?

Dr Hyzler: A lot of business travellers will be anxious about getting back on planes for business trips. Measures [like rapid diagnostic testing] may help to restore confidence in the travel industry, but there will still be people unwilling to travel until a safe and efficacious vaccine is available. 

Businesses will need to listen to the concerns of employees and tailor business requirements accordingly. There will be a greater drive, I suspect, toward teleconferencing meetings until travel gets back to ‘normal’.

BTN Europe: What are the chances of effective treatments or maybe even a vaccine being ready in a year? 

Dr Hyzler: Despite the global collaboration between scientists, institutions and governments, we may well still be searching for an effective vaccine in a year. Even when vaccines reach the final lap in the race for validation, there will be problems with the efficacy of the vaccines and subsequent difficulties in scaling up to the quantities that are needed across the world. 

In all likelihood, there will be several vaccine candidates that are eventually licensed around the world, and they will take their place alongside the annual seasonal influenza immunisation.

Treatment, though perhaps able to reduce the severity of the disease if taken early in the course of the illness, is unlikely to completely eradicate Covid-19. More potent drugs to treat severe disease may reduce the case fatality rate, but just as seasonal influenza still results in between 400,000 and 600,000 deaths each year ­– despite treatment and a customised vaccine – it is unlikely that Covid-19, with its multi-organ involvement, will be cured or eradicated.