By Sophy Macartney
The toll of COVID-19 on the United States revealed a lack of preparedness and vulnerability to biological threats and the mass destruction they could create. Biological threats should be at the forefront of national and health security priorities in response to pandemics like COVID-19 as well as the rising chances of biological terror attacks. Yet at the same time, a tool crucial to preventing the spread of biological threats has just been pushed aside amidst the end of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE).
On May 11, the Federal COVID-19 PHE ended, marking the end of much of the data sharing infrastructure that was crucial to fighting and tracking the pandemic. With the end of the PHE, the government no longer requires laboratories to report testing and immunization results to the CDC, meaning national, county-level test positivity data from COVID-19 Electronic Reporting (CELR) will no longer be available. The Department of Health and Human Services described CDC COVID-19 data surveillance as “a cornerstone” of their response. This speaks to the larger issue — a fragmented healthcare system that is almost certain to respond inadequately to the intentional or unintentional spread of biological threats and weapons.
The threat of biological weapons is thought to be greater than or equal to the threat of nuclear weapons, but is generally treated as the “younger brother” of nuclear threats under the weapons of mass destruction umbrella. There is increasing availability to biological weapons due to dual-use technology, equipment and know-how, contributing to the increasing risk of the use of biological weapons in a terrorist attack. Furthermore, it is uniquely difficult to differentiate between peaceful and military uses of biological substances, particularly in comparison to nuclear checks. Intentional biological attacks also have the potential to seem identical to natural events, which makes accountability and response even more difficult.
Biological crises can come in two forms: intentional terror attacks or unintentional outbreaks. Both involve the spread of dangerous biological materials, which can cause mass disruption. Some materials, like anthrax, botulinum toxin and plague pose a more immediate threat for public health because they cause a large number of deaths in a short period of time. Others with secondary transmission capability can create epidemics. The threat of intentional or unintentional biological threat outbreaks each can have detrimental effects to human lives, public panic, and stability of healthcare capacity. Improved data infrastructure and having nationalized authority on the issue could help both the intentional and unintentional aspects of biological threats.
A recent study found that artificial intelligence (AI) was able to generate 40,000 potential biological weapons chemicals in six hours. The increased access to dual-use technology like this increases the sources that bad actors can turn to for biological attacks. And its potential is only increasing.
Rather than requiring more robust data infrastructure as a bandage on an outbreak of a biological threat, more adequate data infrastructure should become standard in non-emergency times to be preventative rather than reactive. The United States is unlike other wealthy countries in that the authority to share data about the spread of diseases rests in corporations and states rather than at a national level. Public health entities lack the ability to efficiently share data, and having policies that could enable the reporting and sharing of data is necessary to improve rapid response in the future.
Security is not as ingrained in lab research or in crisis preparedness policy as it is in the nuclear field. Nuclear security has more robust preventative measures and nuclear safety precautions are a given in labs, but this is not the case for biosecurity. Preparedness, prevention, and establishing safe practices is much more the norm for nuclear security than it is for biosecurity, despite the heightened biological threat. The biological research culture has catching up to do with its threats and un-evolving safety culture. Information and data sharing and more open communication between the levels of authority should not just be during times of national emergency, like during the COVID-19 PHE which was recently lifted. Ensuring that communication, data availability, and efficient standards become the norm before emergencies ensue are vital to preparedness of handling and preventing biological threat outbreaks. Having mandated data reporting as the standard will help better prepare for both, naturally occurring biological outbreaks as well as terroristic attacks. Senior U.S. policy decision makers and policy shapers believe it is very likely that a major biological attack will occur within the next decade, so now is the time to make the changes necessary to prepare and prevent.
