Pandemic preparationsWhat Do We Need to Do to Get Ready for the Next Global Pandemic?
“Pandemics are going to happen, but we can absolutely prevent the devastation that occurs from a pandemic. We can act now to put us in a position so that when the next pandemic does happen, we don’t have to allow it to get out of control. We can build tools to find it quickly and to act fast. We can build up new public health infrastructure to tackle it once it starts spreading,” says Harvard’s expert Michael Mina.
Michael Mina is assistant professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, a member of the School’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, and associate medical director in clinical microbiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Pathology Department. Mina’s work revolves around disease testing and the development of new technologies to better understand the population and immunological consequences and patterns underlying infectious diseases.
Mina talked with the Harvard Gazette’s Alvin Powell.
Alvin Powell: Is it possible to prevent the next pandemic? If not, can we better prepare for it?
Michael Mina: Pandemics are going to happen, but we can absolutely prevent the devastation that occurs from a pandemic. We can act now to put us in a position so that when the next pandemic does happen, we don’t have to allow it to get out of control. We can build tools to find it quickly and to act fast. We can build up new public health infrastructure to tackle it once it starts spreading.
There are a lot of ways to do this. One of those steps is building up proper surveillance. We can work together — across countries — in a way that betters societies everywhere. We didn’t see it in this pandemic, unfortunately, primarily because our president couldn’t even unite people in one country. But in what I would consider more ordinary times, a virus should be something that all people on earth can rally around.
Powell: What would such a surveillance system look like?
Mina: An immunological observatory, a global immune observatory, would be a massive engineering feat, the likes of which may be compared — at least in my vision — to the weather system. We don’t need physicians working on this problem; we really need engineers and epidemiologists and mathematicians. It would be a “collective global good” sort of program to help prevent — or at least rapidly identify — the next pandemic so that we can respond quickly.
