Coming Soon: Early Warning System To Predict Future Pandemics

London: COVID-19 caught the world by surprise like never before.

With the coronavirus and its variants bringing the planet to a standstill for the better part of two years, researchers have been trying to develop a technology that could predict the next global pandemic.

One of the efforts being carried out in the UK is working on a platform that could develop DNA sequencing and analysis to track the transmission and evolution of respiratory viruses.

The new technology by researchers at Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire will track influenza viruses, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), coronaviruses, as well as previously unknown pathogens to ensure a round-the-clock genomic survey to predict outbreaks.

Dubbed as the Respiratory Virus and Microbiome Initiative, they plan to develop tools to identify fresh viral threats so that an early warning system could be devised to help prevent future pandemics.

The team seeks to establish a standardised approach for combined sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 and other common respiratory viruses in a single assay and developing pathogen-agnostic sequencing, taking lessons from COVID-19 pandemic.

“Britain was at the leading edge of the genomic surveillance of COVID-19 and was responsible for about 20% of all the Sars-CoV-2 genomes that were sequenced across the planet during the pandemic. The knowledge and data we generated allowed us to track – with unprecedented speed and accuracy – Sars-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19, and to monitor how it was changing,” project head Ewan Harrison was quoted as saying by The Guardian.

The target is to contribute to building global genomic surveillance for all respiratory viruses, which are the agents that is most likely to trigger new pandemics.

The researchers are aiming to devise a tool at a comparatively cheaper price that allows them to sequence more than one virus variant that could be infecting a patient from a single sample.

“The crucial point is that we have got to develop a system that uses inexpensive reagents, does not require teams of highly-trained technicians, and can be used at scale. Then we can really make a difference,” Harrison told The Observer.