“We are not doing enough to be ready for the next pandemic,” said William Rodriguez, head of Find, a UN-sponsored foundation that seeks to improve access to testing. screening around the world.
Among the crucial tools to avoid the emergence of a new pandemic like that of Covid are tests, which help to curb the spread of a disease.
Other devices: the identification of viruses or bacteria that could cause the next pandemic, the discovery of vaccines or emergency treatments, the production and distribution of these products, etc.
The goal? Avoiding a new pandemic after three years of Covid. The first case of this disease was diagnosed in China in December 2019. Less than three months later, the World Health Organization (WHO) formalized the pandemic that shook the world.
Last week, it was within the framework of the WHO that international negotiations began on the fight against future pandemics. The World Bank has launched a fund dedicated to the subject and fed by the G20 countries (currently up to 1.6 billion dollars).
“A few mutations”
The initiatives are also private. In Australia, businessman Geoffrey Cumming has spent $170 million to fund a research center run by infectious disease specialist Sharon Lewin.
His team will look into technologies that could serve as the basis for rapidly adaptable treatments against new pathogens. Model to follow: messenger RNA vaccines against Covid. The center will be “operational” within six months, Professor Lewin told AFP.
The objective here is to know how to respond urgently to an unknown pathogen. But anticipation also involves identifying known risks.
The WHO is thus working on updating a list of risk microbes. To be watched in particular: other coronaviruses as well as the flu virus, of course, but also Ebola and Zika.
“For each of these viruses, only a few mutations” could increase their spread, warns epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo, of the American University Brown.
Other pathogens are under surveillance, such as arenaviruses, paramysoviruses – the measles and mumps family – or the Marburg virus.
“Many Crises”
Will these research efforts be sufficient? Many experts and activists fear above all a lack of political will. Which translates into the issue of funding. Thus, the CEPI organization (co-founded by several states and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to deal with epidemics) is seeking 800 million dollars to complete a five-year plan.
Decision-makers should not forget the pandemic issue even if they are “focused on the many current crises”, in a difficult geopolitical and economically context, said Richard Hatchett, head of CEPI, to AFP.
And how can we ensure that all countries, including the poorest, have access to a vaccine or a treatment? “For me, the tragedy of Covid will have been the uneven distribution of vaccines, even once available,” says the epidemiologist.
Experts interviewed by AFP agree. It will be impossible to respond well to the next pandemic if large regions such as Africa, South America, South Asia or the Middle East do not have access to treatments, in particular by producing them themselves. same.
For many activists, it would already be necessary to plan to lift the patents of possible treatments of major importance. But the idea seems unrealistic in the face of opposition from the pharmaceutical sector and a large part of the developed countries.
And there is little development to expect: the tone adopted by these countries in the context of the current discussions at the WHO is “extremely worrying”, estimates Mohga Kamal-Yanni, representative of the NGO People’s Vaccine Alliance.