An unknown future pathogen could have far more devastating consequences than SARS-CoV-2.
By Frances Stead Sellers, The Washington PostCars line up individually in front of COVID-19 vaccination stations in the parking lots of Coors Field on Sunday, Jan. 24, 2021, in Denver, Colo. the arrival of the highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus, representatives of almost 200 countries met - some online, some in-person in Geneva - hoping to forestall a future worldwide outbreak by developing the first-ever global pandemic accord.
“The trauma of the covid-19 pandemic has seeped into the negotiations,” said Ellen ‘t Hoen, a lawyer and public health advocate who specializes in intellectual property policies. Representatives of the WHO’s 194 member countries, she said, are looking backward rather than forward.The reasons are clear.
The United States has signaled its support for a legally binding agreement, including leveraging its purchasing power to expand access to medicines around the world. But the United States, like many European Union countries, is the object of mistrust because it is the seat of the powerful pharmaceutical industry, which is reluctant to relax control over manufacturing know-how.
A new agreement, Phelan said, could include an obligation to share genetic sequence data and factor in public health risks when determining how medical products are shared during an emergency. Unlike in earlier outbreaks, no need exists today to wait for a pathogen sample to arrive by mail in a test tube; work on vaccines and treatments can begin based on genetic sequencing attached to an email.
But signing on is less politically palatable for current political leaders now that so many people have moved on from the pandemic, choosing to ignore the not-if-but-when warnings that public health officials are airing again today, just as they did before the novel coronavirus was identified more than four years ago in China.
Meanwhile, climate change and increased interactions between human and animal populations are increasing the possibility of spillover events spawning zoonotic diseases that are all but impossible to contain given the speed of modern travel.
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