Preventing the next pandemic is far cheaper than responding to one. The COVID-19 pandemic cost the global economy an estimated $8.1 to $15.8 trillion. By comparison, the measures needed to significantly reduce new disease transmission from wildlife would cost between $22 and $31 billion per year, roughly 500 times less. The tools and strategies to prevent pandemics already exist. The challenge is funding them, connecting them, and scaling them before the next threat emerges.
Stop Viruses Before They Jump to Humans
Most pandemics begin the same way: a virus circulating in animals crosses into people. HIV came from primates, Ebola from bats, and SARS-CoV-2 likely from wildlife sold in close proximity to humans. The single most effective long-term strategy is reducing the opportunities for these spillover events to happen in the first place.
That means changing how humans interact with wildlife and livestock. At the farm level, practical steps include improving facility design, relocating water points and feeders to reduce contact between domestic animals and wild species, and making farm resources less attractive to wildlife. These aren’t abstract policy goals. The World Organisation for Animal Health recommends that countries build biosecurity plans targeting clearly identified risk points, such as specific plots or shared water sources where species mix.
On a larger scale, protecting tropical forests matters enormously. Deforestation and land conversion push wildlife into closer contact with livestock and people, creating new opportunities for viruses to jump species. The $22 to $31 billion annual price tag for prevention includes reducing deforestation in high-risk tropical regions, improving livestock biosecurity, and regulating wildlife trade more effectively.
Finding Dangerous Viruses Before They Find Us
Scientists estimate that hundreds of thousands of viruses circulate in animal populations with the potential to infect humans. The goal isn’t to catalog every one of them but to identify which species and which viruses pose the greatest risk and focus surveillance there.
Machine learning is already accelerating this work. In early 2020, researchers built an ensemble of eight statistical models to predict which bat species were most likely to harbor betacoronaviruses, the family that includes SARS-CoV-2. Some of these models correctly identified 100% of novel host species in their test samples, and revised versions predicted more than 400 bat species globally that could be undetected betacoronavirus hosts. This kind of predictive modeling helps direct limited field sampling resources to the animals and regions where new threats are most likely brewing.
Wastewater and Early Warning Systems
Even with the best prevention efforts, new pathogens will emerge. The question is how quickly the world detects them. One of the most promising tools developed during COVID-19 is wastewater surveillance. Because infected people shed viral genetic material through sewage, testing wastewater can reveal rising infection trends four to six days before those same trends appear in clinical case counts. That lead time is critical for triggering containment measures before outbreaks spiral.
Wastewater monitoring works at a community level, capturing signals from people who never visit a doctor or take a test. It’s now being expanded beyond COVID-19 to track influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, and other pathogens. The limitation is infrastructure: it requires sewage systems, laboratory capacity, and trained personnel, all of which are scarce in many parts of the world.
Most Countries Aren’t Ready
The Global Health Security Index, which evaluates pandemic preparedness across 195 countries, paints a stark picture. The average country score in 2021 was 38.9 out of 100, essentially unchanged from 2019 despite the lessons of COVID-19. Prevention of pathogen emergence scored even lower, at just 28.4 out of 100.
The specific gaps are striking. 155 out of 195 countries have not allocated national funds within the past three years to improve their capacity to address epidemic threats. 70% of countries have insufficient health capacity in clinics, hospitals, and community health centers. Nearly two-thirds have not published a national emergency response plan for diseases with pandemic potential. And 73% of countries cannot provide expedited approval for vaccines or antiviral drugs during a public health emergency, the kind of regulatory bottleneck that delays lifesaving treatments by weeks or months.
Even basic communication plans are missing. 149 of 195 countries have not identified how risk communication messages will reach populations with different language, location, or media access needs. These aren’t exotic capabilities. They’re the bare minimum for responding to an outbreak before it becomes uncontrollable.
Connecting Human, Animal, and Environmental Health
Pandemic prevention requires breaking down the walls between human medicine, veterinary science, and environmental monitoring. This concept, known as One Health, sounds intuitive but is difficult in practice because these sectors have separate budgets, separate data systems, and separate chains of command.
The World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and the World Organisation for Animal Health have developed tools to bridge these gaps. National Bridging Workshops bring human and animal health officials together to jointly review their respective assessment results and agree on concrete, time-bound activities to close coordination gaps. Specialized evaluation tools assess veterinary laboratory capacity, epidemiological resources, and the degree to which sectors are actually collaborating rather than working in parallel.
The practical payoff is faster detection. When veterinarians notice unusual die-offs in poultry and that information flows immediately to public health officials, an emerging avian flu strain can be identified and contained weeks earlier than if each sector is watching only its own data.
The 100 Days Mission for Vaccines
COVID-19 vaccines were developed in under a year, a historic achievement. But the goal for the next pandemic is even more ambitious: having safe, effective vaccines ready within 100 days of identifying a new pathogen. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations has outlined a strategy built on several pillars.
The first is prototype vaccines. By developing and testing vaccines against representative viruses from each major viral family now, researchers can solve the scientific challenges specific to that family in advance. When a new related threat appears, they have a head start rather than beginning from scratch. These prototypes need to be tested for safety and immune response before a crisis hits.
The second is faster clinical trials. This means pre-designed trial protocols that can be activated immediately, standardized animal models so labs aren’t duplicating effort, and clinical trial networks that share data across borders in real time. Regulatory agencies also need to reach consensus in advance on what data they’ll require for emergency approvals, so manufacturers aren’t navigating different rules in every country simultaneously.
The third is distributed manufacturing. COVID-19 exposed the danger of concentrating vaccine production in a handful of countries. Building manufacturing capacity across multiple regions means doses can reach populations faster and more equitably when the next crisis arrives.
A New Global Agreement
In May 2025, WHO member states adopted the WHO Pandemic Agreement, a legal instrument designed to strengthen global coordination on prevention, preparedness, and response. It’s the most significant piece of international health governance since the International Health Regulations were revised in 2005.
A central feature is the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System, which aims to ensure that when countries share samples of dangerous pathogens for research, they also receive fair access to the vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics developed from those samples. This addresses a longstanding grievance: during past outbreaks, countries that shared viral samples often couldn’t afford the products developed from them.
The agreement also establishes a Global Supply Chain and Logistics Network, coordinated by WHO, to distribute pandemic-related health products rapidly and equitably. A Coordinating Financial Mechanism will channel funding to strengthen preparedness in countries that need it most. The agreement enters into force 30 days after 60 countries ratify it, and the details of the benefit-sharing system are still being negotiated by an intergovernmental working group.
Paying for Prevention
The Pandemic Fund, housed at the World Bank, represents the largest dedicated financing mechanism for pandemic preparedness. As of early 2026, its portfolio stood at nearly $11.5 billion spanning 128 countries. That includes $1.4 billion in direct grants awarded through three funding rounds, which catalyzed over $10 billion in additional domestic and international resources. Its third funding round alone allocated $499.6 million to 20 projects, mobilizing $4 billion in additional financing.
These 67 projects across 128 countries focus on the fundamentals: disease surveillance, laboratory systems, and health workforce development. The fund’s model of leveraging relatively small grants to unlock much larger investments from governments and other donors is designed to make preparedness spending sustainable rather than dependent on a single source.
Still, $11.5 billion spread across 128 countries is modest relative to the scale of the gaps. When 155 countries haven’t recently invested their own funds in epidemic preparedness and 70% lack sufficient health facility capacity, the financing gap remains enormous. The math, however, is straightforward: every dollar spent on prevention avoids roughly $500 in pandemic response costs.
Laboratory Safety and Oversight
High-containment laboratories that study dangerous pathogens are essential for pandemic preparedness, but they also carry risk. The WHO’s Laboratory Biosafety Manual, now in its fourth edition, has shifted toward a risk-based approach rather than rigid one-size-fits-all rules. This means each laboratory conducts a formal risk assessment before undertaking any work with dangerous organisms, then tailors its safety measures accordingly.
The manual covers everything from facility design and biological safety cabinets to decontamination, waste management, and outbreak preparedness within the lab itself. The emphasis on risk assessment is particularly important as the number of high-containment labs worldwide continues to grow. More labs mean more opportunities for research but also more facilities where accidents could occur. Consistent, evidence-based safety standards applied globally help ensure that expanding laboratory capacity doesn’t inadvertently increase the risk of accidental release.