U.S. to relaunch virus hunt program

A worldwide virus-hunting program allowed to expire last year by the Trump administration, just before the coronavirus pandemic broke out, will have a second life — whatever the outcome of the presidential election.

Joe Biden has promised that, if elected, he will restore the program, called Predict, which searched for dangerous new animal viruses in bat caves, camel pens, wet markets and wildlife-smuggling routes around the globe.

The expiration of Predict just weeks before the advent of the pandemic prompted wide criticism among scientists, who noted the coronavirus is exactly the sort of catastrophic animal virus the program was designed to head off.

In a speech Thursday, Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, briefly alluded to the controversy as she attacked President Donald Trump before the last night of the Republican National Convention.

“Barack Obama and Joe Biden had a program, called Predict, that tracked emerging diseases in places like China,” she said. “Trump cut it.”

The government agency that let Predict die last October has quietly created a $100 million program with a similar purpose as Predict, but it has a different name. The new program, set to begin in October, will be called Stop Spillover.

Predict, which was started in 2009 as part of the Obama administration’s Emerging Pandemic Threats program, was inspired by the 2005 H5N1 bird flu scare. Predict was run by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is an independent foreign-aid agency overseen by the State Department.

Predict was an odd fit for USAID, experts said. Unlike the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the National Institutes of Health, the agency is not normally a home to cutting-edge science.

The U.S. response to pandemics is strangely fragmented. The CDC investigates outbreaks, while the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases pursues vaccines. Much research into tropical diseases and bioweapons is done by the military, legacies of the Spanish-American War and the Cold War, while the State Department coordinates global campaigns against AIDS.

Some experts have called for a more centralized arrangement, a sort of Pentagon for diseases.

In the public health arena, USAID is home to programs like the President’s Malaria Initiative and campaigns to bring clean drinking water to rural villages.