The Vulnerability Scan, a Web Tool to Increase Institutional Biosecurity Resilience

A Multilingual Tool for Standardized Laboratory Biosafety and Biosecurity Assessment and Monitoring

Control of infectious diseases requires the handling of infectious materials by both clinical and public health laboratories with exposure risks for laboratory personnel and environment. A comprehensive tool for assessing the capacity to manage these risks could enable the development of action plans for mitigation. Under the framework of the Global Health Security Agenda action package for biosafety and biosecurity, the authors developed a tool dedicated to assessing laboratory biosafety and biosecurity. The Biosafety and Biosecurity Laboratory Assessment Tool (BSS LAT) assesses the status of all laboratory biosafety core requirements across 10 different modules. It consists of a standardized spreadsheet-based tool that provides automatic scoring. It is designed to support national, regional, and global efforts to strengthen biosafety in clinical, public health, and veterinary laboratories. The BSS LAT was first used in Burkina Faso in collaboration with the African Society for Laboratory Medicine and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to support the country in strengthening their biorisk management system. Since then, it has been successfully used in other countries (ie, Armenia, Burundi, Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Kazakhstan, Liberia), various settings (medical and veterinary laboratories), and translated into several languages (eg, English, French, Russian). The BSS LAT is a multipurpose tool that assists with standardization of biosafety and biosecurity requirements for all laboratories working with infectious materials, serves as a self-assessment guide for laboratories to develop improvement plans and reinforce capacities, and serves as a training guide for individual laboratories and networks or at the national level. The BSS LAT can also be used as a monitoring tool for the assessment of biosafety and biosecurity across all laboratories working with infectious materials at the national, regional, and global levels.

Dual-Use Quickscan: A Web-Based Tool to Assess the Dual-Use Potential of Life Science Research

Research on pathogenic organisms is crucial for medical, biological and agricultural developments. However, biological agents as well as associated knowledge and techniques, can also be misused, for example for the development of biological weapons. Potential malicious use of well-intended research, referred to as “dual-use research”, poses a threat to public health and the environment. There are various international resources providing frameworks to assess dual-use potential of the research concerned. However, concrete instructions for researchers on how to perform a dual-use risk assessment is largely lacking. The international need for practical dual-use monitoring and risk assessment instructions, in addition to the need to raise awareness among scientists about potential dual-use aspects of their research has been identified over the last years by the Netherlands Biosecurity Office, through consulting national and international biorisk stakeholders. We identified that Biorisk Management Advisors and researchers need a practical tool to facilitate a dual-use assessment on their specific research. Therefore, the Netherlands Biosecurity Office developed a web-based Dual-Use Quickscan (www.dualusequickscan.com), that can be used periodically by researchers working with microorganisms to assess potential dual-use risks of their research by answering a set of fifteen yes/no questions. The questions for the tool were extracted from existing international open resources, and categorized into three themes: characteristics of the biological agent, knowledge and technology about the biological agent, and consequences of misuse. The results of the Quickscan provide the researcher with an indication of the dual-use potential of the research and can be used as a basis for further discussions with a Biorisk Management Advisor. The Dual-Use Quickscan can be embedded in a broader system of biosafety and biosecurity that includes dual-use monitoring and awareness within organizations. Increased international attention to examine pathogens with pandemic potential has been enhanced by the current COVID-19 pandemic, hence monitoring of dual-use potential urgently needs to be encouraged.

Systematic approach towards establishing a National Inventory of Dangerous Pathogens

International regulations stipulate that countries need to organize their biosafety and biosecurity systems to minimize the risk of accidental (biosafety) or malicious intentional (biosecurity) release of dangerous pathogens. International Health Regulations (IHR) benchmarks from the WHO state that even for a level of limited capacity countries need to ‘Identify and document human and animal health facilities that store/maintain dangerous pathogens and toxins in the relevant sectors and health professionals responsible for them’. This study provides a stepwise, systematic approach and best practices for countries to initiate a national inventory of dangerous pathogens. With a national inventory of dangerous pathogens a country can identify and document information in a dedicated electronic database on institutes that store or maintain dangerous pathogens. The systematic approach for the implementation of a national inventory of dangerous pathogens consists of four stages; identification, preparation, implementation, and maintenance and evaluation. In the identification phase, commitment of the relevant national ministries is to be established, and a responsible government entity needs to be identified. In the preparatory phase, a list of pathogens to be incorporated in the inventory, as well as a list of institutes to include, is to be agreed upon. In the implementation phase, the institutes are contacted, and the collected data is stored safely and securely in a electronical database. Finally, in the maintenance and evaluation phase meaningful insights are derived and reported to the relevant government authorities. Also, preparations for updates and modifications are undertaken, such as modifications of pathogen lists or institute lists. The approach and database, which is available from the authors, have been tested for the implementation of a national inventory of dangerous pathogens in multiple East-African countries. A national inventory of dangerous pathogens helps countries in strengthening national biosafety and biosecurity as well as in their compliance to IHR.

Accelerating Action in Global Health Security: Global Biosecurity Dialogue as a Model for Advancing the Global Health Security Agenda

Biosecurity and biosafety measures are designed to mitigate intentional and accidental biological risks that pose potentially catastrophic consequences to a country's health system, security, and political and economic stability. Unfortunately, biosecurity and biosafety are often under-prioritized nationally, regionally, and globally. Security leaders often deemphasize accidental and deliberate biological threats relative to other challenges to peace and security. Given emerging biological risks, including those associated with rapid technological advances and terrorist and state interest in weapons of mass destruction, biosecurity deserves stronger emphasis in health and security fora. The Global Biosecurity Dialogue (GBD) was initiated to align national and regional donor initiatives toward a common set of measurable targets. The GBD was launched by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), with support from Global Affairs Canada's Weapons Threat Reduction Program and the Open Philanthropy Project, and in coordination with the government of The Netherlands as the 2018-19 Chair of the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) Action Package Prevent-3 (APP3) on Biosafety and Biosecurity. The GBD provides a multisectoral forum for sharing models, enabling new actions to achieve biosecurity-related targets, and promoting biosecurity as an integral component of health security. The GBD has contributed to new national and continent-wide actions, including the African Union and Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention's new regional Initiative to Strengthen Biosafety and Biosecurity in Africa. Here we present the GBD as a model for catalyzing action within APP3. We describe how the benefits of this approach could expand to other GHSA Action Packages and international health security initiatives.

Development of a Biosecurity Checklist for Laboratory Assessment and Monitoring

Introduction:

Laboratory biosecurity is of continuously growing interest due to increasing concerns about deliberate misuse of biological materials and emerging biological risks. These risks continue to be magnified by globalization, the rapid pace of scientific development, and dual-use technologies. Worldwide laboratory capacities are expanding, which calls for concrete actions to improve laboratory biosafety and biosecurity practices to protect researchers and the community. Hence, laboratories require comprehensive biorisk management programs to minimize the risk of accidental and deliberate release of infectious biological materials.

Objective:

Malaysia has prioritized the concern of national biosecurity and aims to consolidate laboratory biosecurity performance to detect and prevent the deliberate release of biological agents.

Methods:

Two 3-day workshops were organized over the course of four months in which Malaysia collaborated with The Netherlands. This bilateral engagement aimed to integrate biosecurity practices in their national biorisk management programs, and resulted into a comprehensive biosecurity checklist for laboratory assessment and monitoring.

Results:

This biosecurity checklist is based on Malaysian and Dutch expert opinions and national and international guidelines and regulations. The biosecurity checklist is a survey-driven tool that consists of a set of concrete questions for each key biosecurity area, which are discussion points for assessment.

Conclusion:

We display a practical biosecurity checklist for laboratory assessment and monitoring. Although the presented checklist was the template for the specific Malaysia checklist, it could serve as a template for other countries.