OpinionCovid is back, and the U.S. is unprepared for the next bug. Here’s what to do.
Millions of Americans have the boxes of tissues, missed work days and hospital visits to prove it: Respiratory illnesses, including influenza, covid-19 and RSV, have surged this winter. Meanwhile, health experts warned once again last week that the world needs to prepare for a hypothetical “Disease X” perhaps far deadlier than covid-19. Yet, for all covid’s lessons, health officials, governments and the public have more to do, fighting the diseases circulating now and making the next pandemic less severe.
Extend paid sick leave
The pandemic changed many Americans’ behaviors. Many more people are reaching for face masks without being urged and staying home when feeling ill. Institutions and governments should do all they can to encourage basic hygienic practices that should be common courtesy. National paid sick leave, for example, would encourage more people to stay home — at least among the one-quarter of the workforce who now lacks it.
Get new vaccines into more people’s arms
The SARS-CoV-2 virus is still evolving rapidly. The current variant, JN. 1, appeared only in September. Fortunately, hospital admissions have not skyrocketed; the most recent booster vaccine continues to protect against hospitalization and severe illness. Still, only 21 percent of adults older than 18 years in the United States are vaccinated with the updated booster. More should get it.
During the pandemic, hopes were high that researchers would develop a pan-coronavirus vaccine that could work against all variants and provide longer protection. A road map for the research and development has been created, and research efforts are underway, including the Biden administration’s $5 billion Project NextGen. But experts say the progress is slow and the obstacles complex.
Science has yet to entirely unravel long covid, the tendency of those who are infected to experience fatigue and other debilitating symptoms in the months after. It seems that covid may cause damage throughout the body’s organs — and to the immune system. The best way to avoid long covid is to get vaccinated.
But as The Post’s Lauren Weber documented recently, lawmakers who oppose vaccine requirements are winning elections for state legislatures. Robert M. Califf, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which oversees vaccines, warn in a Jan. 5 article in JAMA that vaccine hesitancy has reached a tipping point: “The situation has now deteriorated to the point that population immunity against some vaccine-preventable infectious diseases is at risk.”
Invest in preparedness
When the pandemic hit four years ago, the United States was unprepared. In the aftermath, political leaders vowed that pandemic preparedness would be high on the national agenda.But Congress and the Biden administration balked at creating a national commission on the pandemic that could have suggested basic changes. In earlier years, there was bipartisan support for the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, on which the U.S. response effort relied, but now reauthorization faces resistance from House Republicans angry over the way public health agencies handled the pandemic. The law expired last year.
The World Bank last year established a Pandemic Fund to strengthen pandemic preparedness, with a focus on low- and middle-income countries. Experts said it would need $10 billion a year to be effective; so far it has raised $2 billion. In October, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board warned, “The world’s capacity to deal with a potential new pandemic threat remains inadequate.”
Build early warning systems
The pandemic boosted many countries’ capacity to conduct genomic sequencing, key to tracking covid. But they have yet to stitch together a global early warning system that would catch outbreaks before they spread.
There has been some progress. Wastewater surveillance has proven quite useful for tracking covid, detecting trends and providing early warning. The World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have set up new data centers, hoping to avoid the confusion and analytical gaps that hampered the coronavirus response. While Washington dithers, some states have taken concrete action, such as Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb’s creation of a commission in Indiana to help improve its public health system. Also, the White House has launched the new Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response.
As J. Stephen Morrison and Michaela Simoneau of the Center for Strategic and International Studies have pointed out, a new generation of national leaders is rising in public health agencies: Mandy Cohen, director of the CDC; Monica Bertagnolli, director of the National Institutes of Health; Jeanne Marrazzo, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; and Renee Wegrzyn, director of the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.
If the last few years has taught us anything, they will not have a moment’s rest.
