“We need better capabilities, also, because there is a reasonable likelihood that another serious pandemic that could be worse than Covid-19 will occur soon, possibly even within the next decade,” Eric Lander, director of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, told reporters in a telephone briefing.
The plan comprises five elements. Joining Lander on the call was Beth Cameron, special assistant to the President and National Security Council senior director for global health security and biodefense.
The first goal of the new plan is “transforming our medical defenses” through increasing the country’s ability to develop vaccines and therapeutics against future biological threats. Second, “ensuring situational awareness” by developing a more robust early warning system and real-time monitoring.
The third element of the administration’s plan is “strengthening public health systems” by modernizing public health infrastructure, prioritizing at-risk communities and establishing international infrastructure and financing for pandemic readiness. The fourth element is “building core capabilities,” which means appropriately stockpiling and developing personal protective equipment and expanding the country’s supply chains. This will include increasing biosafety and improving the regulatory capacity in the support of vaccine and therapeutic development.
The plan’s final element is centered on around establishing a national and unified mission control “to manage, integrate and ensure accountability for all aspects of the US pandemic preparedness program.”
“I think they have identified most of the key issues,” Dr. Eric Toner, senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told CNN. “If they invest serious money and, more importantly, sustained commitment, perhaps we can make real progress.”
Toner noted that many medical and national security experts had been focused on pandemic preparedness for 20 years or longer, but said much of the attention and most of the funding fizzled out in 2009, when the pandemic of H1N1 swine flu turned out to be less serious than feared.
“The Obama administration turned its attention to other huge national problems,” he said.
“And the Trump administration went further and devalued preparedness efforts,” he added. “The entire public health infrastructure has been allowed to decay.”
