By Xinqi Su Hong Kong microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung has done battle with some of the world’s worst threats, including the SARS virus he helped isolate and identify. And he has a warning. Another pandemic is inevitable and could exact damage far worse than Covid-19, according to the soft-spoken scientist sometimes thought of as Hong Kong’s answer to top US health expert Anthony Fauci.
“Both the public and (world) leaders must admit that another pandemic will come, and probably sooner than you anticipate,” he told AFP at the city’s Queen Mary Hospital, where he works and teaches. “Why I make such a horrifying prediction is because you can see clearly that the geopolitical, economic, and climatic changes are changing so rapidly,” he told AFP. Politicians must “come to their senses” and solve “global existential threats,” he warns in his new autobiography “My Life in Medicine: A Hong Kong Journey”.
While world leaders are more focused on “national or regional interests”, Yuen said a rapidly changing climate coupled with emerging infectious diseases should be a top priority. “This is something so important that we should not ignore.” Yuen is a globally recognised authority on coronaviruses and infectious diseases, but he came from humble beginnings.
Born in Hong Kong in the late 1950s, he grew up in a 60-square-foot subdivided flat with his parents and three brothers. Since graduating from medical school in 1981, he has worked in the city’s publ.