Top scientists have warned the next pandemic is coming but Britain is not ready.
More than three years after Covid first struck, experts say the UK is no better prepared than it was in 2020.
Public services being stripped and infection monitoring research defunded, as well as the current state of the NHS means the country is "losing ground".
It comes as virologists said a new Covid variant - known as Arcturus - behind a surge of 10,000 cases a day in India could become the dominant strain here.
It was first identified in January and has since been found in 22 countries, including the UK and US, with India now resuming production of vaccines.
Sir John Bell, a leading immunologist and a member of the UK’s Covid vaccine taskforce during the pandemic, said it is “a question of when, not if, another pandemic strikes”.
Writing for the Independent, he added that the nation needs to adopt an “always on” approach that includes building a more resilient healthcare system, carrying out better surveillance, and identifying future threats.
“Despite everything we have learned, we are not ready for the next pandemic,” he wrote.
He pointed to modelling that estimates there is a 38 percent chance of another pandemic in our lifetime.
Professor Teresa Lambe, one of the principal investigators leading the Oxford-AstraZeneca programme, highlighted the government’s decision to disband "crucial" tracking systems as an indicator that the UK would not be fully prepared.
She added: “We have learnt time and again that we need to track this virus carefully to distinguish if the current vaccine recommendations are enough.”
She said without the work and investment, Brits will be like "sitting ducks".
Sir David King, a former chief scientific adviser to the government, who led the 2006 research that closely predicted the Covid pandemic, said already over-stretched hospitals will struggle to cope if another major outbreak occurs.
He said: “If you wait for the next epidemic, which I think is where the government may be now – if you wait until the next vaccine is developed, for whatever disease that is, it will take months and months for that vaccine to arrive.
"We cannot rely on that. We will have many, many cases, it’ll get really out of hand again, and then we’ll have hospitals completely overwhelmed by an outbreak of this kind.”
Professor Peter Horby, the lead for the groundbreaking Covid Recovery trial and head of the Pandemic Sciences Institute, added that the government is failing to build on its successes during the pandemic.
Instead, he said there has been a "discontinuation of funding" of the ONS survey, Covid Geonomics Consortium and the Recovery trial, and "mothballing" of lab facilities.
A government spokesperson told the Mirror: “We have flexible pandemic response plans which are continuously updated to reflect the latest scientific information, lessons learned from exercises and our response to emergencies, including Covid, and are kept under constant review to ensure preparedness.
“The UK Health Security Agency was set-up to combat future health threats and it continues to monitor the threat posed by Covid through surveillance systems and genomic capabilities, while maintaining our laboratory infrastructure and stock of lateral flow tests will ensure testing can be scaled up swiftly if a Covid wave results in significantly increased pressure on the NHS.
“A record £14.1 billion of funding for health and social care over the next two years will help the NHS to address the unprecedented impact of Covid and cut waiting times.”
