Pandemic preparedness and forecast

Outlook of pandemic preparedness in a post-COVID-19 world

The COVID-19 pandemic was met with rapid, unprecedented global collaboration and action. Even still, the public health, societal, and economic impact may be felt for years to come. The risk of another pandemic occurring in the next few decades is ever-present and potentially increasing due to trends such as urbanization and climate change. While it is difficult to predict the next pandemic pathogen threat, making reasonable assumptions today and evaluating prior efforts to plan for and respond to disease outbreaks and pandemics may enable a more proactive, effective response in the future. Lessons from the COVID-19 response and pandemic influenza preparedness underscore the importance of strengthening surveillance systems, investing in early-stage research on pandemic pathogens and development of platform technologies, and diversifying response plans across a range of tactics to enable earlier access to safe and effective interventions in the next pandemic. Further, sustaining the robust vaccine manufacturing capacity built because of COVID-19 will keep it ready for rapid response in the future. These actions will not be successful without improved global coordination and collaboration. Everyone, including the biopharmaceutical industry, has a role to play in pandemic preparedness, and working together will ensure that the most lives are saved in the next pandemic.

Clustered Regularly Interspaced short palindromic repeats-Based Microfluidic System in Infectious Diseases Diagnosis: Current Status, Challenges, and Perspectives

Mitigating the spread of global infectious diseases requires rapid and accurate diagnostic tools. Conventional diagnostic techniques for infectious diseases typically require sophisticated equipment and are time consuming. Emerging clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated proteins (Cas) detection systems have shown remarkable potential as next-generation diagnostic tools to achieve rapid, sensitive, specific, and field-deployable diagnoses of infectious diseases, based on state-of-the-art microfluidic platforms. Therefore, a review of recent advances in CRISPR-based microfluidic systems for infectious diseases diagnosis is urgently required. This review highlights the mechanisms of CRISPR/Cas biosensing and cutting-edge microfluidic devices including paper, digital, and integrated wearable platforms. Strategies to simplify sample pretreatment, improve diagnostic performance, and achieve integrated detection are discussed. Current challenges and future perspectives contributing to the development of more effective CRISPR-based microfluidic diagnostic systems are also proposed.

Evaluating simulations as preparation for health crises like CoVID-19: Insights on incorporating simulation exercises for effective response

Today's health emergencies are increasingly complex due to factors such as globalization, urbanization and increased connectivity where people, goods and potential vectors of disease are constantly on the move. These factors amplify the threats to our health from infectious hazards, natural disasters, armed conflicts and other emergencies wherever they may occur. The current CoVID-19 pandemic has provided a clear demonstration of the fact that our ability to detect and predict the initial emergence of a novel human pathogen (for example, the spill-over of a virus from its animal reservoir to a human host), and our capacity to forecast the spread and transmission of the pathogen in human society remains limited. Improving ways in which we prepare will enable a more rapid and effective response and enable proactive preparations (including exercising) to respond to any novel emerging infectious disease outbreaks. This study aims to explore the current state of pandemic preparedness exercising and provides an assessment of a number of case study exercises for health hazards against the key components of the WHO's Exercises for Pandemic Preparedness Plans (EPPP) framework in order to gauge their usefulness in preparation for pandemics. The paper also examines past crises involving large-scale epidemics and pandemics and whether simulations took place to test health security capacities either in advance of the crisis based on risk assessments, strategy and plans or after the crisis in order to be better prepared should a similar scenario arise in the future. Exercises for animal and human diseases have been included to provide a "one health" perspective [1,2]. This article then goes on to examine approaches to simulation exercises relevant to prepare for a health crisis involving a novel emergent pathogen like CoVID-19. This article demonstrates that while simulations are useful as part of a preparedness strategy, the key is to ensure that lessons from these simulations are learned and the associated changes made as soon as possible following any simulation in order to ensure that simulations are effective in bringing about changes in practice that will improve pandemic preparedness. Furthermore, Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies could also be applied in preparing communities for outbreak detection, surveillance and containment, and be a useful tool for providing immersive environments for simulation exercises for pandemic preparedness and associated interventions which may be particularly useful at the strategic level. This article contributes to the limited literature in pandemic preparedness simulation exercising to deal with novel health crises, like CoVID-19. The analysis has also identified potential areas for further research or work on pandemic preparedness exercising.

Synergistically enhanced colorimetric molecular detection using smart cup: a case for instrument-free HPV-associated cancer screening

Rationale: Early and accurate detection of disease is crucial for its prevention, identification, and treatment. However, most of disease diagnostics is still limited in clinical laboratories due to the need of complicated instruments and professional personnel. Herein, we reported a smartphone-based synergistically enhanced colorimetric method for molecular diagnostics in our point of care (POC) smart cup platform. Methods: A disposable microfluidic chip was developed for colorimetric loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) detection of multiple HPV DNA in our POC smart cup platform. The colorimetric detection takes advantage of synergistic effect of PPi4- and H+ ions, two byproducts of LAMP reaction. Color signal of LAMP assay was recorded and analyzed by our custom Android app (dubbed "Hue Analyzer"). Results: Our method not only significantly improves colorimetric readout, but also provides a 10-fold increase in detection sensitivity. It has been successfully applied for HPV-associated cancer screening with spiked saliva and clinical swab samples. Conclusion: The proposed POC diagnostic platform is completely compatible with other nucleic acid biomarkers and has great potential for personalized health monitoring and disease prevention.