At a 'crucial' moment for pandemic preparedness, experts say the world isn't ready

regime funding cutbacks and a suspect in public wellness authorities substance the domain is not ready for the next pandemic, according to a report released Monday by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB).

"Everyone who has the responsibility for the well-being and the development of their people should be concerned because we definitely are not ready for the next pandemic."

More frequent infectious disease outbreaks have growing health, economic, political and social impacts, according to the report, which says investment has not kept pace with rising pandemic risks, meaning there is less capacity to recover from them.

On key measures — equitable access to diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics — the GPMB report says the world is moving backwards. 

"We need an army of community health workers," Phumaphi said. "Everybody needs to be prepared for the next pandemic." 

If anything, the recent hantavirus outbreak — which includes three deaths and 11 confirmed and probable cases, but spreads in such a way experts are not worried about a pandemic — should serve as "a wake-up call," said Peter Hotez, a professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas.

"Mother Nature is not playing coy with us," he said, likening it to a scene from the 1980s Ghostbusters movie.

"You saw the skeleton in the taxi cab and you saw the green blob on the dining room table and you knew something really bad was about to go down. And that's where I think we're at right now."

Humanity faces a triple-headed monster — pandemics, climate change and disinformation — which blocks our ability to respond, Hotez wrote in a widely shared social media commentary.

1/n: I could be wrong, of course, but my take about this hantavirus outbreak is less about the actual outbreak and more about what it means in the context of the last two decades and moving forward. Let me explain...

Both Hotez and Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan's Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, say the risks will be exacerbated as a direct consequence of the Trump administration's decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization and slash hundreds of millions from mRNA vaccine development and global health and aid groups

"We're effectively going into a situation where it's like everyone for themselves," Rasmussen said.

"We're going to be in real trouble if a virus emerges someplace where we're not equipped to deal with it — and that could be in Canada."

Mistrust in government and public health agencies, combined with attacks on scientific institutions, political polarization and an "organized disinformation machine" is also a significant threat, Hotez said

"It's all very dark and very dangerous because that disinformation campaign is thwarting a lot of really important public health responses," he said.

"When we talk about national security, we're quick to talk about defence, right? ... But we don't think about pandemics, and yet we learned through COVID how destabilizing they are."

Rasmussen sees that threat realized in Canada's loss of measles elimination status late last year. The disease is "completely preventable," and the vaccine has been safe and effective for more than 50 years.

"That should be the biggest wake-up call of them all — that we are rejecting public health triumphs that have saved millions of lives, literally," Rasmussen said.

"We're deciding not to do that because of politics and lies. We're basically saying, 'Nah, bring back the viruses.'"

What COVID-19 taught us about containing the hantavirus outbreak

Still, despite the GPMB's grim report, experts say Canada is probably better prepared in some ways for another pandemic than it was in 2020.

"Canada is actively bolstering its biomedical research," said David Safronetz, who researches highly pathogenic zoonotic viruses at the Public Health Agency of Canada's National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg.

"There's a lot of emphasis going into public health research and preparedness. We're working a lot with international partners."

When it came to COVID-19, a series of auditor general reports would later find the country had outdated plans, weak data-sharing systems and poorly managed vaccine stockpiles.

PHAC has since taken steps to address those vulnerabilities through expanded surveillance systems, stockpile planning, genomic sequencing and emergency co-ordination. Canada is also rebuilding its domestic vaccine and medical supply capacity.  

Meanwhile, federal and provincial governments have more experience handling mass vaccination, ICU surges, border measures and public communication.

"Thank goodness Canada is hanging in there and still sticking close to the science," Hotez said.

Canada loses measles elimination status

Still, social and structural vulnerabilities remain.

"The biggest problem with preparedness has to do with just the Canadian way of doing things," Rasmussen said. 

"There's a lot of discussion about how do we decide what we're going to do to be prepared and not as much actually going into preparedness."

Right now, the political commitments for a global pandemic response are "not there," Phumaphi said.

To that end, the GPMB report includes three main recommendations:

National reporter

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