Geneva: Understanding when, where, how and why outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics start is extremely challenging. The COVID-19 pandemic is the most extreme example of this in recent years. “We still don’t know how the COVID-19 pandemic began, and unfortunately, the work to understand its origins remains unfinished,” WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
The WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, or SAGO, a panel of independent experts that the WHO established in 2021, is now finalizing its independent assessment of how the COVID-19 pandemic began, the WHO Director-General informed media persons here.
“As I have said many times, including to senior Chinese leaders, China’s cooperation is absolutely critical to that process. That includes sharing information on the Huanan Seafood Market, the earliest known and suspected cases of COVID-19, and the work done at laboratories in Wuhan, China. Without this information, none of us are able to rule any hypothesis out. Until or unless China shares this data, the origins of COVID-19 will largely remain unknown,” he said.
Keeping these issues in mind, the World Health Organization with the support of SAGO, today published a new framework to guide countries in the studies that need to be performed to understand the origins of pathogens with epidemic and pandemic potential.
While there are a number of tools available for investigating infectious disease outbreaks, this is the first unified, structured approach to investigating the origins of a novel pathogen. This framework is the first version of a “how-to” guide that will be updated as and when needed, based on feedback from users.
The framework outlines six areas in which scientific investigations are needed to identify the origins of outbreaks:
- Early investigations of the first identified cases/clusters/outbreaks to identify potential sources of exposure, collection of samples at the source, and to define the characteristics of the novel pathogen involved for the establishment of diagnostic assays.
- Human studies: to understand the epidemiology including clinical presentation, modes of transmission, pathology and earliest presence in syndromic surveillance samples.
- Human/Animal interface studies to identify potential animal reservoirs, intermediate hosts and reverse zoonoses.
- studies to identify insect vectors or other sources of infection as well as their earliest presence in the environment.
- Genomics and Phylogenetics studies to identify precursor strains, genomic characteristics, evolution in intermediate hosts and humans and spatial distribution over time.
- Biosafety/Biosecurity assessments to determine if a breach in laboratory or research activities may have been associated with the first cases.
It stresses the importance of timely, comprehensive scientific investigations, of building research capacity, and the necessity of sharing results rapidly when they become available.
“This framework should be used by Member States each time a new pathogen emerges. It would have been useful to implement when COVID-19 struck. However, even with a framework in place, it requires the cooperation, collaboration and transparency of all States,” Dr Ghebreyesus said.
– global bihari bureau
Image by Markus Winkler from Pixabay
