In September last year, then Chancellor Angela Merkel officially opened the World Health Organization’s “WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence”.

Founding partners are the Robert Koch Institute and the Charité in Berlin, the partner for artificial intelligence is the Hasso Plattner Institute.

A new component of a global research landscape is thus being created in Berlin, which is intended to identify, evaluate and, ideally, prevent future pandemic outbreaks at an early stage.

“The WHO Hub fosters collaboration around the world.

We use the best technologies and the most meaningful data to identify and understand risks for future epidemics and pandemics," announced the head of Chikwe Ihekweazu at the time.

Data availability, cooperation, speed - the central keywords of every global epidemic and pandemic fight not only since Covid-19.

The current pandemic has dramatically underscored its importance.

With each phase of the pandemic, the global research community has learned.

The key here is rapid access to the genetic information of the pathogens, to what is known internationally as Digital Sequence Information (DSI).

Pandemic prevention also benefits

Most recently at the end of 2021, the world was able to observe how important it was for South African researchers to share their findings on the genome data of the omicron variant in real time - namely via the GISAID (Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data) database, which is also supported by Germany.

From the results of this and other genome sequencing, the "raw material" for the worldwide research community emerged again.

This made it possible to move quickly from a genetic sequence to vaccine design and manufacture.

The first adapted vaccines against Omikron should be available from spring 2022, i.e. a few months after information about the new variant became known.

Pandemic prevention also benefits.

On the basis of the DSI data, which is made available worldwide and in a timely manner, the risk potential of new variants could be modeled within a few days, giving researchers and vaccine developers an effective tool.

Genetic information as the basis for successful vaccine development and prevention - without the worldwide exchange of scientific knowledge, the pandemic would definitely have been more devastating and deadly.

So how can we ensure that this extraordinary international collaboration and data sharing between science and pharmaceutical companies continues?

To be clear: we can't at the moment.