The US will end its federal public health emergency for Covid on Thursday, but there's still so much to unpack and learn from this three-year fight, as well as the vulnerabilities that could be exposed if a new, severe Covid variant emerges.
And predicting future outbreaks is exceptionally difficult. Rates of transmission can change quickly as people shift their behaviors. Once an outbreak has begun, it’s easier to predict what may change day-to-day, because outbreaks move and change slower than other phenomena, like weather, says Scarpino. But applying those metrics to a future outbreak of a new Covid-19 variant or a different novel disease is less useful, because human actions aren’t necessarily consistent.
Still, the Covid response has also produced some real wins for fighting future pandemics. The mRNA technology behind rapid Covid vaccine development, and governments have learned how to conduct widespread disease testing. Now it’s important to ramp up the gains made in disease surveillance and expand them to other respiratory viruses, says Pavitra Roychoudhury, director of Covid-19 sequencing at the University of Washington Virology Lab.
The WHO is hoping that some of these lessons will stick. Last week, the organization released an updatedfor nations to cope with Covid-19. It encourages countries to develop stronger data collection, use surveillance to identify variants, get high-risk groups vaccinated, and ensure that people who are diagnosed with Covid-19 have access to care.
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