Publications

Rasmussen et al. argue that “increasing oversight across virology or all microbe research would represent a misdirection of resources and would fail to provide a commensurate increase in safety or security” and “harm surveillance, antiviral discovery, monitoring for resistance to antivirals and vaccines, and other critical efforts.” On the contrary, a strengthened version of the recommendations of the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity (NSABB) is crucial for the success of microbiological science. Implementing these recommendations would reduce the risks of a deliberate or accidental pandemic, while using precious research resources efficiently, restoring trust in science, strengthening US leadership in biosecurity and biosafety, and safeguarding the biomedical research enterprise, as ASM itself has said.

A scoping literature review of learnings from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic was commissioned by WHO to inform operational priorities for future respiratory pathogen pandemic preparedness. The learnings are grouped according to WHO’s subsystems for health emergency preparedness, response and resilience. Key takeaway messages include: 1) Preparedness works; 2) Health is everyone’s business; 3) No one is safe until everyone is safe; and 4) Response must be agile and adaptive. The review will support pandemic planners at all levels to develop and update preparedness and response plans.

The Adenoviridae viral family is divided into 6 genera, with only members of the genus Mastadenovirus known to infect mammals, including humans.

This is the first of a 2-part special feature that focuses on threat agnostic approaches for the early detection of naturally occurring or humanmade biological threats, which are critical for a robust biodefense and public health response.

The Practical playbook for addressing health misinformation provides guidance on ways public health and medical professionals can set themselves up for success, make decisions on when they need to act to address misinformation, choose which actions and approaches might be useful to their audiences and information needs, and evaluate how their efforts are working.

This report calls out the urgent need to strengthen and build resilience in primary care (PC) whilst building cross-sector collaboration between public health (PH) and community-based organizations (CBOs).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, countries often needed to divert their human, financial and material resources away from existing health programmes to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. There are numerous reports of global inequities in access to critical care and medical countermeasures exacerbated by the pandemic as a consequence of chronically underfunded and weakened public health systems.

The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly affected all mass gatherings for sporting and religious events, causing cancellation, postponement, or downsizing.

Paramyxoviridae is a large viral family that contains many once common and well-known human pathogens, such as measles and mumps, as well as other pathogens that pose concerns for their potential to cause epidemic or pandemic disease.¹

Integrated vaccine delivery – the linkage of routine vaccination with provision of other essential health services – is a hallmark of robust primary care systems that has been linked to equitable improvements in population health outcomes.

Language inequities in global health stem from colonial legacies, and global health security is no exception. The International Health Regulations (IHRs), a legally binding framework published by the WHO, lay the foundation for global health security and state the roles and responsibilities States Parties are compelled to follow to improve their capabilities to prevent, detect and respond to potential public health emergencies of international concern.

In response to growing reports of concerning/harassing messages and backlash related to public health work, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health established the FlagIt report and response system. The system uses a dedicated FlagIt email inbox for faculty and staff to report harassing or concerning messages related to public-facing work and has an autoreply message sharing available institutional resources.

Biomanufacturing practitioners and researchers describe the norms that should govern the growing, global field, to include safety, security, sustainability, and social responsibility. These ‘4S Principles’ should be broadly adopted so that the future of the field may provide the greatest benefits to society.

Among the approximately 2 dozen families of viruses that have the capacity to infect humans, roughly 25% of these families have pandemic potential (Figure 1). Specifically, this capacity is conferred by their ability to be transmitted via the respiratory route.¹ Devising response plans for each of these 6 viral families — Adenoviridae, Coronaviridae, Paramyxoviridae, Picornaviridae, Pneumoviridae, and Orthomyxoviridae — is essential for pandemic preparedness.

How we share in the work of caring for one another during a pandemic is a common thread in the papers comprising this special feature. The collection itself represents another round of retrospection and forward thinking about ways to improve upon readiness and response for a catastrophic health event now that we have lived through the COVID-19 pandemic.