When COVID-19 struck in late 2019 and early 2020, governments worldwide were caught off guard. Despite decades spent improving global capacity to detect, track, and analyze disease threats, the virus still managed to rapidly spread around the globe within weeks. The systems that countries and international institutions established, particularly those designed to spot novel threats before they metastasized into something more dangerous, ultimately proved insufficient to halt COVID-19’s spread. 

In response to this fundamental challenge, the Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) published an assessment of the state of the global infrastructure designed to alert decision-makers to hazardous pathogens before they touch off significant outbreaks—henceforth referred to as pathogen early warning systems in this report. In July 2021, CSR released the results of this work in our report, Toward a Global Pathogen Early Warning System: Building on the Landscape of Biosurveillance Today.

Since then, the importance of effective early warning systems has only increased. COVID-19 has killed more than one million people in the United States alone, and the International Monetary Fund estimates that the global response will cost more than $12 trillion. Scientists are still working to understand SARS-CoV-2’s lasting health impacts—ranging from antibiotic-resistant coinfections to a host of other lasting symptoms. Other diseases are also spreading in new and dangerous ways, including monkeypox (now referred to as mpox), a virus once limited to West and Central Africa that has traveled to 110 countries in less than one year. Ebola has resurfaced in Uganda, spreading to seven districts with infection control measures resulting in school closures. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, moreover, has sparked fears that Moscow might use biological weapons during the conflict.