Back to the future

In a mere four months, the world has been brought to its knees by a previously unknown virus. But covid-19 won’t be the last, or perhaps even the deadliest, pandemic.

An estimated 650,000 to 840,000 unknown viral species capable of infecting humans lurk in wildlife. At the same time, population growth, urbanization, globalization, climate change, the relentless destruction of wildlife habitats and the harvesting of wild species have brought these viruses in closer contact with humans than ever before.

Pandemics may become the new normal. But that doesn’t have to be. Pandemics are preventable, and the world can do three things to prevent them.

1. We can create a global early warning system. Much like systems for tsunamis and earthquakes, an early warning system could allow for early detection of and rapid response to an outbreak before it spreads.

Pandemics usually begin when a virus or other pathogen jumps from animals to people in what is called a zoonotic spillover. The coronaviruses that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and now covid-19 pandemics all jumped from bats to humans through an intermediary animal host — civets in SARS, camels in MERS, and a still unknown intermediary in covid-19.

Routine reconnaissance for spillover between these sentinel animals and the people in close contact with them could provide early warning of an impending outbreak.

Big data alone would cause too many false alarms if not backed up by outbreak investigations on the ground. A global early warning system would require a cadre of well-trained epidemiologists who could be rapidly deployed to investigate and contain an outbreak. Programs conducting zoonotic reconnaissance, AI surveillance

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and outbreak investigations already exist, but they need to be massively scaled up and integrated into a comprehensive global early warning system.

2. We can prevent future pandemics by strengthening public health. Early warnings would be useless if local, national and global public health systems cannot mount an effective response to an outbreak.

Places in the world that have crushed the epidemic curve so far — such as Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea — all have robust public health systems that took early actions, set up a unified command, executed a coordinated and science-based strategy, deployed massive technological and human resources, ramped up testing and contact tracing, and provided trustworthy and transparent information to the public.

In contrast, testing remains inadequate throughout the United States.

3. We can prevent future pandemics at their source by minimizing the risk of spillovers. Protecting natural habitats from relentless human encroachment and creating buffer zones around protected areas are important long-term goals.

More immediately, we can stop wildlife trade, not only by regulating, monitoring or shutting down live animal markets like the ones in Wuhan, but also by enforcing international law to combat illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade. The United States and China are responsible for 60 percent of global imports and exports of all wildlife, respectively; it’s time for our two nations to step up.

Preventing future pandemics will require an unprecedented level of global cooperation. The question is whether we can get our act together before the next pandemic strikes.