The “priority pathogen” guide from UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is designed to help scientists and researchers focus their efforts, as well as speeding up the development of vaccines when most needed.
To create the tool, experts assessed the pandemic and epidemic potential of each viral family by looking at the severity of disease, routes of transmission and previous pandemics among known pathogens in the family.
Information on whether the risk is sensitive to climate change, if vaccines are available, and if human-to-human transmission is likely is also included in the tool.
square HEALTH Big ReadA new pandemic is expected and the UK still isn't prepared
Read More
Among the viral pathogen families classed as high-risk for both epidemics and pandemics are coronaviridae, which includes Covid-19, and the orthomyxoviridae family, which includes avian influenza.
The list does not mean what pathogen officials think is most likely to cause the next pandemic, but rather areas that require increased scientific study and investment.
“Having said that there are areas where we still need more or better diagnostics, vaccines and medicines and therapeutics, and this tool has been designed to help inform the work of government research funders, but also our partners in industry and academia who are critical to the development of these tools that we so desperately need.”
She stressed that UKHSA carries out threat assessment work separately, adding: “What’s different about this tool is that we’ve taken into consideration not just the fact that some of these families have got high potential to cause pandemics or epidemics, but also where there are currently gaps in the availability of either diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics, or where there are evolving and growing changes around antimicrobial resistance, or where there is a significant sensitivity to climate change, that might mean that this threat evolves or changes more rapidly as a result of that context.
“So our approach is very much to increase our resilience against all families of concern and to work with partners to advance resilience across all of these.”
“So that means the change in the distribution of mosquitoes and ticks that can carry viruses that cause adverse health effects to humans, and also to animals in some ways, and that is one area that we’re monitoring very closely,” she said.
square HEALTH AnalysisA pandemic more deadly than Covid looms - why is the UK still not prepared?
Read More
Dr Oliver said that some diseases on the list, like Ebola, may not be present in the UK but have an impact globally.
“So for example, as we’ve seen in the past, large outbreaks of Ebola virus have had major impacts globally, including socioeconomic impacts, so we take all those factors into account.”
“Lists like this have been made for many years, and they represent an effort to prioritise infections for advisory and funding purposes, ostensibly to align research funding as closely as possible to public health need,” he said.
“Pointless because the list of viruses is so long that it’s tricky to name a significant viral pathogen that has not been included. Potentially harmful because a prescriptive list like this could misdirect funding towards certain infections, and away from problems that need urgently to be solved.”
It comes just after the fifth anniversary of the first national lockdown following the coronavirus outbreak, which ended up killing more than 200,000 people in the UK.
Professor Martin McKee, who chaired a scientific advisory committee advising WHO Europe on lessons from the pandemic, told The i Paper although the scientific community is “definitely better prepared” for the next pandemic there are still “major problems” in terms of the resilience of the country as a whole.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( The bacteria, viruses and parasites that pose the next big risk to UK )
Also on site :