Drawing Lessons From COVID-19 , Experts are Preparing for Another Pandemic
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic , the World Health Organization ( WHO )’ s priorities included building on lessons from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa from 2014 to 2016 , with a focus on priority pathogens with a consideration of Disease X , and a research agenda primarily on vaccine development . In late 2015 , WHO convened a workshop to identify elements to be used to prioritize diseases and to agree on an initial list of diseases to be urgently addressed under the WHO R & D Blueprint . Of note was the potential for a new infectious disease caused by a novel agent . The outcome of this meeting fed into the prioritization of and research agenda for Disease X .
At the 33rd European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases ( ECCMID ) 2023 conference , WHO presented its methodology for the 2024 revision of its 2022-2023 Bacterial
Priority Pathogens List ( BPPL ), which should be issued soon . Currently , the WHO ’ s the priority diseases are : COVID-19 ; Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever ; Ebola virus disease and Marburg virus disease ; Lassa fever ; Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus ( MERS-CoV ) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome ( SARS ); Nipah and henipaviral diseases ; Rift Valley fever ; Zika ; and , of course , Disease X .
Last year , WHO also gathered experts in a symposia to tackle what could emerge as Pathogen X / Disease X .
At this WHO meeting , Ombajo ( 2022 ) said that characteristics of pathogens with potential to cause a pandemic include an appreciable case fatality rate ; ongoing risks ; efficient human-to-human transmissibility ; absence of an effective or widely available treatment / therapeutics / vaccines ; immunologically naïve
Drawing Lessons From COVID-19 , Experts are Preparing for Another Pandemic
What will the next pandemic look like ? Health officials from across the globe gathered in Geneva late last year at a World Health Organization meeting to focus on how lessons learned from COVID-19 might best prepare civilization for the “ next one .”
Jun Wang Titled “ Scientific Strategies from Recent
Outbreaks to Help Us Prepare for Pathogen X ,” the 2022 conference brought together leaders in research , pharma , government and nonprofits . Among the speakers was Jun Wang , an associate professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at Rutgers University ’ s Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy .
Wang has conducted extensive research into antiviral drug resistance – when influenza virus and SARS-CoV-2 evolve and are no longer affected by medicines designed to treat them . Wang discusses some of the big ideas coming out of the conference :
What makes world health leaders so sure there will be another pandemic ?
If you look at history , you can see that infectious disease pandemics are occurring more frequently . The human population is growing . We keep encroaching upon , invading the territory of wild animals that are reservoirs of pathogens – viruses , bacteria , and other deadly microbes . It is highly likely that , just as we saw with COVID-19 , new pathogens will continue to jump species as human territory overlaps with that of wild animals . When it comes to discussing “ the next one ,” it ’ s not a matter of if , but a matter of when .
What will “ Pathogen X ” be like ?
It ’ s possible it could be an entirely new pathogen that jumps species , moving from infecting an animal to sickening humans . But we know about the most obvious candidates for Pathogen X because these infectious diseases are already out there from recent decades : flu , Zika virus , Ebola , dengue , Nipah , Rift Valley fever and monkeypox . They have already killed and harmed people but have not spread throughout human populations on the scale of COVID . However , those bugs continue to evolve and , sooner or later , with the extent of human travel and population growth , any one of them might become widespread and cause big problems .
If we don ’ t know for sure what the nature of Pathogen X will be , can we actually prepare ? Are there lessons learned from COVID-19 that apply , nonetheless ?
We certainly can prepare – and we must . We ’ ve learned many lessons from our battle with COVID and we can apply many of those insights now .
First , we should start developing vaccines and antivirals for the high-priority pathogens listed by the World Health Organization . The goal is to have drug candidates that pass Phase I clinical trials so they can be immediately available for Phase II and III trials when outbreaks emerge . Second , we need to study drug resistance in parallel to drug development . We know resistance is inevitable . Related to our research at Rutgers , we are currently working on predicting how SARS-CoV-2 can evade the oral drug nirmatrelvir . It ’ s just like playing chess , right ? We must be one step ahead . If we know , we can start to design the second generation of drugs to escape the resistance problem . Third , we learned about the value of disease detection and making testing kits widely available . Antivirals typically only work at the early stage of infection , so a fast and accurate testing kit is essential . Combating a pandemic requires consolidated efforts from basic science researchers , clinicians , government agents , biotech companies , pharmaceutical industries and the whole society . How can you speed up clinical trials ? How can you speed regulatory approval ? With COVID , we did come up with vaccines and some treatments quickly , but we will need to work harder and creating new , more adaptable systems to allow more innovations to move through the system more quickly . Those are key issues that must be solved if we want to do better in the next event .
What ’ s an important message you would like the public to know from your own experiences and insight ?
The public generally pays more attention to chronic diseases than it does to infectious diseases . Perhaps that ’ s because so many survivors of chronic disease are among us , often in pain , while those who contract infectious diseases either pass away or recover without treatment , so they do think it is important . With COVID , we lost over 6.5 million people worldwide . So , the important message for Pathogen X is basically that we should devote more funding and resources for infectious diseases . We can never , never underestimate the evolutionary power of pathogens .
16 november 2023 • www . healthcarehygienemagazine . com