The Virus Hunters Trying to Prevent the Next Pandemic
obody saw SARS-CoV-2 coming. In the early days of the pandemic, researchers were scrambling to collect samples from people who had mysteriously developed fevers, coughs, and breathing problems. Pretty soon, they realized that the disease-causing culprit was a new virus humans hadn’t seen before.
Now, the virus hunters are watching out not only for new versions of SARS-CoV-2, but they’re also continuing their search for other dangerous disease-causing bugs. In June, as monkeypox began infecting people around the world, the network monitored genetic sequences of the virus that showed it came from the less virulent of two monkeypox strains endemic in Africa, and that existing vaccines would continue to be effective.
But the public-health partners benefit, too. It’s an expensive operation to run: Abbott wholly funds the coalition, providing its partners with state-of-the-art equipment, training, and lab supplies to collect samples and conduct genetic sequencing. Abbott also shares its scientific and manufacturing expertise, since it has been surveilling viruses globally for the last 30 years, from the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
The only way to be truly prepared for the next pandemic is to make such coalitions the norm. Sustaining them between public health threats is among the best ways to defend against the next big one. “Public-private partnerships are essential for [disease] surveillance, testing, treatments, you name it,” says Dr. Eric Topol, director and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. “We do better if those groups are working together.
Within days of confirming the findings, de Oliveira also shared them with coalition partners around the world—in the U.S., India, Thailand, Brazil, and Columbia, as well as throughout the continent of Africa—to give countries a head start in looking for the genetic changes signaling the Omicron variant, just as they had done with Beta and Gamma.
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