It's been five years since COVID-19 made its appearance, shaking the world. Since then, things have gotten better, with new vaccines, therapies and a greater understanding of how the virus is spread. While COVID is still with us, we now regard it as a manageable disease. But as the current avian flu outbreak reminds us, the risk for a new pandemic is always present. UC Davis Health Chief of Infectious Diseases Stuart Cohen shares what lessons COVID has taught us that will help us better respond next time.
Surveillance and sharing information
As COVID recedes in our collective worries, we in the scientific and medical communities know that there inevitably will be another pandemic someday. According to the Center for Global Development, the annual likelihood of a pandemic is 2–3%, which means a 47–57% probability of another deadly pandemic in the next 25 years. Luckily, COVID taught us some lessons that — if we heed them — will help us deal with the next pandemic.
First, COVID pointed out the importance of early identification and warning systems. In late 2019, people involved in pandemic preparedness knew something was lurking in Asia and were worried. Chances are that the next pandemic will also be a zoonotic disease — that is, something that jumps from animals to humans.
Since I started working in Infectious Diseases in 1981, we've seen HIV/AIDS, Ebola, SARS, MERS, the H1N1 flu and now COVID-19, all of which were zoonotic in origin. Except for HIV, they're all transmitted via the airborne or droplet route, so they spread from person to person more easily.
We need surveillance systems that can identify these species jumps at an early stage and warn people that a potential health threat is coming.
Cooperation between veterinarians and physicians who work in human medicine is extremely important. That's something we do well at UC Davis. Between our School of Veterinary Medicine and our School of Medicine, we have a highly collaborative, cohesive group working on pandemic preparedness.
Combating the next pandemic will be a team sport. It will take the combined efforts of the medical and science communities and the public to save lives and deal with the pandemic that comes next.-Stuart Cohen, chief of infectious diseases
Developing tests quickly
Second, thanks to COVID, we also know the importance of speedily developing diagnostic tests — and making them quickly and widely available. During the early days of COVID-19, we were behind the eight ball because the test rollout was so slow. Once we got tests into laboratories the turnaround time for a result was slow and we didn't have enough spare tests to do surveillance to figure out how far the disease had spread. That's an area that must improve before the next pandemic hits.
This means more and better collaboration between academia and the diagnostics companies. More government funding would also be helpful for development of technology that is easily adaptable to identification of a new pathogen.
Read about how UC Davis developed its own COVID test in 19 days.
Treatment and prevention
Third, we will need to quickly develop treatments and prevention strategies. When AIDS first appeared in the early 1980s, we went almost two years before we knew what caused the disease, another year and a half until there was a diagnostic test, and decades until effective treatments and preventive drugs were developed.
Science is much faster now. With COVID, we saw how the mRNA platforms enabled industry to develop vaccines. Those platforms are adaptable and flexible and will be key in dealing with the next pandemic. Drug development also occurred at an expeditious pace, initially focused on treating the sickest patients but later for those who were not as severely ill but had the risk of progressing.
'A team sport'
Finally, to fight the next pandemic, we will have to enlist and engage the public. If there's one thing COVID taught us, it's that everyone needs to be part of the solution. Misinformation and mistrust made fighting COVID more difficult than it needed to be.
The scientific community definitely made some missteps during COVID. With a new disease, you can't know everything about it. We in the science world have to be transparent about what we know and what we are still learning. Transparency helps increase scientists' credibility and keeps people engaged.
Knowledge is power. During the pandemic, I participated in livestreamed public town halls with Olivia Kasirye, the public health officer for Sacramento County. Members of the public got to ask questions — and they were good questions. People came up to me afterward and said they really appreciated the information we brought to them.
Combating the next pandemic will be a team sport. It will take the combined efforts of the medical and science communities and the public to save lives and deal with the pandemic that comes next.
Read the latest COVID-related news from UC Davis Health.
