Recently the World Bank announced a new pandemic prevention fund. While this is very welcome news, the $1.4 billion committed to the fund so far is a long way from its goal of $10b. This is just one example of underfunding of pandemic prevention. 1/12

www.pandemicactionnetwork.org/news/closing-the-gap-global-pandemic-fund-tracker

Lat year the White House requested $65b for pandemic prep, but Congress approved just ~$2b.

COVID-19 cost the US alone $16t. Even if a COVID-like pandemic strikes just once a century, it would be worth investing >$100b annually to prevent it. 2/12

progress.institute/preventing-pandemics-requires-funding/

But pandemic risk may be increasing, both from climate change increasing viral spillover events and from the increasing power of biotechnology to synthesize pathogens. So we should be doing even more to stop pandemics. 3/12

dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1007286

www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/04/how-climate-change-impacts-pandemics/629699/

While strengthening health systems is a key part of reducing pandemic risk, we should also be investing in tools that can scale, providing everyone with a robust defense against pathogens. The good news is that there are lots of promising pathways to explore. 4/12

We can speed vaccine development by developing vaccines for prototype pathogens from key viral families. The White House suggested it would take $20b to achieve this, but again, Congress only approved $2b total for pandemic preparedness. 5/12

www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2202669

In an outbreak, effective PPE will be necessary for key workers to safely do their jobs. DARPA has a project looking into this, but we can do much more to develop better PPE that can be worn for lengthy periods and manufactured at scale. 6/12

www.darpa.mil/news-events/2021-04-19

We should also do more to make the air we breathe as clean as the water we drink. Improving building ventilation is key, but we should also look into using the virus-killing potential of UVC light and the newer *far*-UVC light. 7/12

UVC light has shorter wavelengths than UVA or UVB, making it safer for humans. Upper-room UVC is a process where UVC light is directed above the heads of people in a room, sterilizing the air which is circulated with ventilation. This has been safely used for decades. 8/12

More on upper-room UVC here: www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/ventilation/uvgi.html 9/12

Far-UVC has even shorter wavelengths and is absorbed by a layer of dead skin without reaching the epidermis. This means it could be used in more situations than normal UVC light. 10/12

More research can find how to use it most effectively and safely. We should speed this research up and in the mean-time roll-out upper-room UVC light into more high-risk spaces. 11/12
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10643389.2022.2084315

COVID-19 has been awful, and future pandemics could be even worse. We should be investing much more to ensure we don’t go through another COVID-19 and to protect future generations from even more devastating pandemics. 12/12