“Improving Virus Tracking and Surveillance for Public Health and Safety”

What needs to improve is our ability to track viruses. We estimate that at least 300,000 viruses lurk in wild animals. It is unlikely that all of them can infect humans or domestic animals. However, the risk is considerable, even if only one percent of them can do it. More than 70 percent of emerging infectious diseases, such as human immunodeficiency virus, influenza, West Nile virus, Ebola, chikungunya, Zika, mpox (formerly known as monkeypox), and syndrome severe acute respiratory syndrome infection (SARS) can be attributed to human exposure to wildlife.

More than a decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists and policymakers called for increased efforts to detect infectious threats to human health. A 2011 report from the National Biomonitoring Advisory Subcommittee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the White House recommended measures to reduce the risks of a pandemic, including a call for global investment in people and the science needed to provide an efficient and effective early warning system for potential threats. This includes sampling people, pets, and wildlife with unexplained illnesses for the presence of known and unknown viruses, and developing methods to monitor social media for signs of outbreaks. Having such a system would be helpful, regardless of whether an outbreak is due to contact with wildlife or is the result of a research-related event.

Markets for wild animals, as well as their trade as food or pets, should be prohibited to reduce the frequency of human exposure to infectious pathogens. But these bans would be difficult to police and accidental exposures would continue to occur. Therefore, it is important to continue the necessary research to immediately identify potential threats to human health and domestic animals that endanger food safety.

Public health authorities should monitor humans at risk of exposure to infectious diseases through proximity to wildlife, travel, residence in densely populated areas, or participation in large gatherings. As we have learned from the recent mpox outbreak, infectious agents can rapidly globalize following festivals where people from many geographic regions converge, then disperse again. By comparing test results to human and animal samples, we will have the ability to detect and respond to early evidence of interspecies transmission through containment and development of diagnostic tests, drugs, and vaccines. These investments will benefit both the economy and public health. A conservative cost of $100 million per year for surveillance is a small fraction of the more than $10 trillion global gross domestic product. which is calculated that they were lost to the pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

Infectious disease laboratory research is essential, but needs to be better regulated. We currently have a set of regulations that vary from country to country and, in some cases, within the same country. The World Health Organization should convene an international group of experts to define the best research practices with wildlife and infectious agents. With the rise of synthetic genomics, it is possible to create new viruses and recreate old ones, such as smallpox. Manufacturers should be required to follow up on orders for genetic sequences that could be assembled to create potential pathogens.