Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense launches interactive tracker of federal biodefense actions

To provide real-time updates on federal actions that could help defend against biological threats, the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense has created an interactive recommendations tracker of completed, in-progress, and items of inaction.

“This new and interactive tracker will build on the findings of the Commission’s Biodefense in Crisis report, include near real-time status updates, and evolve over time as the federal government continues to address our recommendations,” Commission Executive Director Asha George said. “Visitors will be able to offer their own feedback and updates. We are excited about this new tracker and encourage anyone who works in or studies these issues to use it often.”

The recommendations in question were made through the National Blueprint for Biodefense in 2015. Currently, the tracker has identified only three of the 87 corresponding action items stemming from that report’s 33 recommendations as having been completed. However, all but 22 have had at least some partial action.

In a recently released analysis — Biodefense in Crisis — the Commission warned that, even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. remains at catastrophic biological risk from either another pandemic or biological attack. It also offered 11 new recommendations to add to the mix, based partly on lessons learned from the ongoing pandemic.