WASHINGTON: In a sign of how Covid-19 has placed pandemics at the centre stage of national security, the Joe Biden administration released a National Biodefence Strategy and Implementation on Countering Biological Threats, Enhancing Pandemic Preparedness, and Achieving Global Health Security on Tuesday.
According to a senior administration official who briefed reporters in the run up to the release of the document, the plan directs all departments and agencies to prioritise biodefence in their annual budgets; it directs the “intelligence community to continuously track the evolving threat landscape in this area, providing critical information needed to address naturally occurring, accidental, and deliberate biothreats”; and it boosts US government’s ability to respond to these threats by ensuring it exercises annually emergency responses, reviews its ongoing responses, and adjusts federal priorities on a regular basis.
Laying the background to the document, a second administration official said that Covid-19 had “absolutely devastated” communities in America and the rest of the world, resulting in millions of death and trillions of dollars of economic losses globally, “And beyond Covid, the global community is concurrently fighting outbreaks of monkeypox, of polio, Ebola in Uganda, highly pathogenic avian influenza right here in the United States, and other infectious diseases.”
The official added that the risk of another pandemic “as bad or worse” than Covid-19 is a real threat. “Some modellers predict that that could happen within the next 25 years, if not sooner.”
The strategy document is based on a set of assumptions. These include the following principles – biological threats are “persistent”; they originate from multiple sources; they don’t respect borders; they impact critical infrastructure and supply chains; multisectoral and multilateral cooperation is essential for biodefence; a “one health approach” reduces the occurrence and impact of bioincidents; and science and technology will continue to advance globally.
Five goals and implementation plan
To achieve the objective of a “world free of pandemics and catastrophic biological incidents”, the strategy has five goals and is based on a whole-of-government approach based on the participation of 20 federal agencies.
These include, according to the second official, detection (“to ensure awareness and early warning of pandemics and biological threats”); prevention (“prevent epidemics and biological incidents before they happen, whether they are naturally occurring, deliberate, or accidental”); preparation (“for reducing the impacts of epidemics and other biological incidents when they occur”); response (“to rapidly respond to outbreaks and biological incidents when they occur”); and recovery (“to restore the community, economy, and environment after a pandemic or biological incident”).
To achieve these goals, the US will invest in strengthening local capacity both at home and abroad. This will include “recruiting, training and sustaining a robust, permanent cadre of health workers in all 50 states” and supporting 50 countries to strengthen their own capacity.
Scientific breakthroughs
Another element of the strategy is the focus on scientific breakthroughs. A third administration official said that Covid had sharpened the focus on dealing with unknown threats – “so not just the things we know, but the things we don’t know”. The official said there are 26 family of viruses known to infect humans, “many of which we are far less prepared for than coronaviruses”.
“The National Biodefence Strategy plans out a series of moonshot efforts building off of last year’s release of the American Pandemic Preparedness Plan that will help us accelerate the speed of our response and prepare for these unknown threats,” the official said. Immediate timelines for these are not possible, the US administration acknowledged, but it predicted that these can be achieved “with the right resources” in the next five to ten years.
To meet this goal, the Biden administration is focusing on the following steps. One, it hopes to transform “early warning of pathogens through next-generation technologies”. Two, it aims to launch “diagnostics for any new pathogen within 12 hours of an outbreak, scaling to tens of thousands of diagnostic tests within a week, and developing rapid tests within 90 days”.
Three, the strategy aims to develop novel vaccines within 100 days, manufacture enough vaccines to cover the American population within 130 days, and develop sufficient global supply for high risk global populations within 200 days. And four, the US will accelerate therapeutic development and validation to “repurpose existing drugs within 90 days or develop novel therapeutics within 180 days”.
To achieve these objectives, the administration is using a baseline funding but has also sought $88 billion from the Congress for pandemic preparedness.
Biosafety
To prevent pandemics and biological threats from accidental or deliberate sources, the US will also galvanise support for international mechanisms to strengthen lab safety and biosecurity norms and practices globally and strengthen international norms against biological weapons, including through efforts in the Biological Weapons Convention that help foster greater transparency.
When asked about specific actions to further tighten, regulate, or provide additional oversight of gain-of-function research in the US and internationally, an administration official said the focus on biosafety was vital.
For this, the US will “safe and secure biological laboratories and practices” by supporting a domestic and international cohort of biosafety and biosecurity experts who can champion responsible research. It will also strengthen “responsible conduct for biological research” and “accelerate biosafety and biosecurity innovation”.
