Pandora Report: 6.21.2019

Pandemics, Bioterrorism, and Global Health Security – From Anthrax to Zika Workshop 
Less than one month until our workshop and just a couple weeks to get your early registration discount…have you signed up? This 3.5 day workshop is the place to be to learn the challenges facing the world at the intersection of national security, public health, and the life sciences. The workshop faculty are internationally recognized experts from the government, private sector, and academia who have been extensively involved with research and policy-making on public health, biodefense, and national security issues. Topics range from protecting the bioeconomy, to biosecurity, vaccine development, disease risk assessments, and more!

Pandemic Preparedness in the Face of Fake News
Biopreparedness is challenging enough…but when you throw in the growing threat of mis/disinformation…this can seem like a feat requiring nothing short of a Herculean effort. “When the next pandemic strikes, we’ll be fighting it on two fronts. The first is the one you immediately think about: understanding the disease, researching a cure and inoculating the population. The second is new, and one you might not have thought much about: fighting the deluge of rumors, misinformation and flat-out lies that will appear on the internet. The second battle will be like the Russian disinformation campaigns during the 2016 presidential election, only with the addition of a deadly health crisis and possibly without a malicious government actor. But while the two problems — misinformation affecting democracy and misinformation affecting public health — will have similar solutions, the latter is much less political. If we work to solve the pandemic disinformation problem, any solutions are likely to also be applicable to the democracy one.” From misinformation regarding the source of a disease or outbreak, to that involving treatments that work…the implications can make or break “society’s ability to deal with a pandemic at many different levels.”

A Call for Cooperation in a New Cyberbiosecurity Landscape
Vulnerabilities within cyberbiosecurity range from biomanufacturing to farm-to-table enterprises, but it will take a true collaboration within these fields to drive change. “The life sciences now interface broadly with information technology (IT) and cybersecurity. This convergence is a key driver in the explosion of biotechnology research and its industrial applications in health care, agriculture, manufacturing, automation, artificial intelligence, and synthetic biology. As the information and handling mechanisms for biological materials have become increasingly digitized, many market sectors are now vulnerable to threats at the digital interface. This growing landscape will be addressed by cyberbiosecurity, the emerging field at the convergence of both the life sciences and IT disciplines. This manuscript summarizes the current cyberbiosecurity landscape, identifies existing vulnerabilities, and calls for formalized collaboration across a swath of disciplines to develop frameworks for early response systems to anticipate, identify, and mitigate threats in this emerging domain.”

Australian Health System Capacity to Handle a Bioattack
How well do you think the U.S. health system would handle a smallpox bioattack? Researchers in Australia tested out the health system capacity in Sydney against this very scenario. “We used a model for smallpox transmission to determine requirements for hospital beds, contact tracing and health workers (HCWs) in Sydney, Australia, during a modelled epidemic of smallpox. Sensitivity analysis was done on attack size, speed of response and proportion of case isolation and contact tracing. We estimated 100638 clinical HCWs and 14595 public hospital beds in Sydney. Rapid response, case isolation and contact tracing are influential on epidemic size, with case isolation more influential than contact tracing. With 95% of cases isolated, outbreak control can be achieved within 100 days even with only 50% of contacts traced. However, if case isolation and contact tracing both fall to 50%, epidemic control is lost. With a smaller initial attack and a response commencing 20 days after the attack, health system impacts are modest. The requirement for hospital beds will vary from up to 4% to 100% of all available beds in best and worst case scenarios. If the response is delayed, or if the attack infects 10000 people, all available beds will be exceeded within 40 days, with corresponding surge requirements for clinical health care workers (HCWs). We estimated there are 330 public health workers in Sydney with up to 940,350 contacts to be traced. At least 3 million respirators will be needed for the first 100 days. To ensure adequate health system capacity, rapid response, high rates of case isolation, excellent contact tracing and vaccination, and protection of HCWs should be a priority. Surge capacity must be planned. Failures in any of these could cause health system failure, with inadequate beds, quarantine spaces, personnel, PPE and inability to manage other acute health conditions.”

Developing a PPE Selection Matrix for Preventing Occupational Exposure to Ebola
Preparing your workplace for a potential Ebola patient? Check out this matrix for choosing PPE. GMU Biodefense alum Chris Brown co-authored this helpful article to guide healthcare workers, laboratories, and other work environments in avoiding occupational exposure to Ebola virus. “The matrix applies to a variety of job tasks in health care, laboratories, waste handling, janitorial services, travel and transportation, and other sectors where workers may be exposed to the Ebola virus during outbreak events. A discussion of the information sources and decision-making process for developing the matrix forms the basis of the recommendations. The article then emphasizes challenges and considerations for formulating the matrix, including identifying information sources to help characterize occupational exposures, aligning recommendations among stakeholders with varying viewpoints, and balancing worker protections with feasibility concerns. These considerations highlight issues that remain relevant for preparedness efforts ahead of future US cases of Ebola or other emerging infectious diseases. OSHA developed a personal protective equipment selection matrix to help employers protect workers from exposure to Ebola virus in the event of future US cases. Toward facilitating preparedness for cases associated with outbreaks, this article discusses the matrix of personal protective equipment recommendations, which apply to a variety of job tasks in healthcare, laboratories, waste handling, janitorial services, travel and transportation, and other sectors where workers may be exposed to the Ebola virus during outbreak events.”

NTI Report – A Spreading Plague: Lessons and Recommendations for Responding  to A Deliberate Biological Attack
“To address this preparedness deficit, NTI | bio, Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security, and the Center for Global Development offer recommendations for urgent action in a new paper, A Spreading Plague: Lessons and Recommendations for Responding to a Deliberate Biological Event. Drawn from a senior leaders’ tabletop exercise held in advance of the Munich Security Conference on February 14, 2019, the paper presents key findings and organizers’ recommendations for critical improvements, including within the United Nations system, to prevent catastrophic consequences of deliberate and other high-consequence biological events.” Pulling from a tabletop exercise, the report highlights five emergent themes – international coordination, information sharing, investigation and attribution, and financing for response and preparedness.