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
Emerging COVID-19 Success Story: Vietnam's Commitment to Containment
Despite sharing a land border with China, Vietnam mounted one of the strongest early responses to COVID-19, reporting only 35 deaths by December 31, 2020, compared to 90,000 in the UK. This article highlights Vietnam's swift and proactive actions to detect and contain infections early in the pandemic. Key strategies included immediate border closures, extensive contact tracing, centralised quarantine, and clear, consistent government communication.
Original text:
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-exemplar-vietnam
Author(s):
Todd Pollack, Guy Thwaites, Maia Rabaa et al.