Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic, the global alarm and system for emerging health threats remains underdeveloped. The probability of extreme epidemics is projected to triple, yet delayed reporting (with H3N8 avian flu, Marburg virus), antiquated digital surveillance systems (COVID-19, influenza, dengue), and coordination gaps (mpox) persist.
As the United Nations celebrates the Pandemic Treaty and new funding mechanisms, those achievements are being undermined by shrinking health budgets, the politicization of science, and the looming health impacts of climate change. Governments now are tasked with improving the current pandemic preparedness system before the next health threat emerges.
To determine how countries should build a twenty-first-century defense system on a twentieth-century budget, a global group of experts that included doctors, epidemiologists, artificial intelligence (AI) engineers, and economists convened during a closed-door session at the seventy-eighth World Health Assembly.
Their conclusion was clear: Governments should stop patching broken systems and start deploying frontier tech technologies, such as AI, to leapfrog challenges.
Analysis during the roundtable identified the major critical information gaps that hobbled the COVID-19 response and revealed how AI can fill them.
