Within 10 years, the World Health Organization (WHO) sees a path to increase the use of and access to genomic surveillance for monitoring and analyzing pathogens through a strategy targeting inequities and leveraging existing capacities.
Genomic surveillance is a process whereby pathogens are constantly monitored and picked apart so researchers and other health experts can determine their genetic similarities and differences. Currently, one in three countries lacks the capacity to utilize this, leaving them at greater risk of evolving infectious diseases and the spread of pathogens and leaving them behind in developing vaccine countermeasures.
Release of the global genomic surveillance strategy for pathogens with pandemic and epidemic potential 2022–2032 sought to turn this around through a unifying framework of utilizing existing capacities, tackling usage barriers, and improving the use of genomic surveillance globally.
“The complexities of genomics and the challenges of sustaining capacities in different settings, including workforce needs, means that most countries cannot develop these capabilities on their own,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, said. “The global strategy helps keep our eyes on the horizon and provides a unifying framework for action.”
Until COVID-19, genomic surveillance was rarely done in-country anywhere due to its complicated and expensive nature. As of March 2021, WHO determined that 54 percent of countries had that capacity, and by the following January, investments helped that grow to 68 percent. While funding helped, the public sharing of sequence data also aided matters, with 43 percent more countries publishing such data as of January 2022 than the previous year.
WHO added that genomic surveillance was critical to identifying a novel coronavirus’s role at the heart of COVID-19, tracking and identifying its new variants, and creating the first diagnostic tests and vaccines.
“Genomic surveillance is critical for stronger pandemic and epidemic preparedness and response,” Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, said. “This pandemic has laid bare the fact that we live in an interconnected world and that we are only as strong as our weakest link. Improving global disease surveillance means improving local disease surveillance. That is where we need to act, and this strategy will provide us with the foundation.”