e="text-align: center;">The Next Pandemic Pathogens Are The RNA Viruses
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has now reported a new study shedding light on the characteristics of naturally occurring microorganisms that constitute a global catastrophic biological risk (GCBR).
GCBRs are defined as “those events in which biological agents—whether naturally emerging or reemerging, deliberately created and released, or laboratory engineered and escaped—could lead to sudden, extraordinary, widespread disaster beyond the collective capability of national and international governments and the private sector to control. If unchecked, GCBRs would lead to great suffering, loss of life, and sustained damage to national governments, international relationships, economies, societal stability, or global security.”
The overarching aim of this study is to provide an inductive, microbe-agnostic analysis of the microbial world to identify those fundamental principles that underlie this special category of microorganisms that have potential to cause global catastrophe.
“Health security preparedness needs to be adaptable to new threats and not exclusively wedded to historical notions,” said Amesh Adalja, MD, project lead and senior scholar at the Center. “A more active-minded approach to this problem will, in the end, help guard against a GCBR event occurring.”
To put in the recommendations and findings in their report, Adalja’s project team including senior scholar Eric Toner, MD, and senior analyst Matthew Watson, examined various previously published literature and reports on emerging infectious disease traits, the pathogenic potential of germs, and other relevant subjects
The team, together, interviewed over 120 technical experts from academia, business, and government.
The initial and chief finding reported, summarizes common qualities of a possible GCBR-level pandemic pathogen. The manner of transmission of this pathogen, the group reasoned, will probably be respiratory; being contagious through the incubation period, before symptom development, or if infected people show only mild symptoms.
They also believe it is going to require specific host population variables (e.g., immunologically naïve individuals ) and added intrinsic microbial pathogenicity characteristics (e.g., a reduced but important case fatality rate) that collectively substantially increase illness spread and disease.
The project team’s preparedness-related findings are reflected in eight key recommendations:
- Preparedness against GCBR-level threats should have a focused approach with some flexibility.
- Historical pathogen list-based approaches should not stand as permanent fixed ideas that stultify thinking on pandemic pathogens.
- Improving surveillance of human infections from respiratory-borne RNA viruses should become a higher priority.
- An increased emphasis on developing a specific pipeline of various antiviral agents for RNA respiratory viruses—both broad spectrum and virus specific—would add resiliency against potential GCBR agents.
- Vaccines against RNA respiratory viruses—including a universal influenza vaccine—should be pursued with increased priority.
- A clinical research agenda for optimizing the treatment of respiratory-spread RNA viruses should be funded by pharmaceutical companies and medical device companies and pursued by clinical centers.
- Special review is warranted for respiratory-borne RNA virus research that could increase pandemic risks.
- Pursuing microbiologically specific diagnoses of infectious disease syndromes in all locations globally should become more routine.
“We hope policymakers and practitioners consider our recommendations in their work to strengthen health sector resilience and fortify pandemic preparedness,” said Dr. Adalja.
