Biosecurity Fundamentals: Pandemics
The world witnessed the severe humanitarian and economic repercussions of pandemic pathogens during COVID-19 crisis, and we remain dangerously unprepared for future pandemics.
With the rate of zoonotic pathogen spread increasing and rapid technological advances in synthetic biology and AI, there exists the possibility of far deadlier pandemics, but also new opportunities to defend against them.
This podcast is from the Biosecurity Fundamentals: Pandemics course, which covers technical and policy efforts to prevent, detect and respond to catastrophic pandemics.
Biosecurity Fundamentals: Pandemics
Want to Prevent Pandemics? Stop Spillovers
This article proposes four key actions that can be taken to prevent outbreaks from zoonotic spillover: protecting tropical forests, regulating or banning live wildlife markets, improving biosecurity for farmed animals, and improving health and economic security, particularly in hotspots for disease emergence. For those digging deeper into zoonotic spillover for this week's exercise, you will find the original paper in the optional resources section.
Original text:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01312-y#:~:text=faces%20another%20pandemic.-,Four%20actions,-The%20risk%20of
Author(s):
Neil M. Vora, Lee Hannah and Susan Lieberman et al.