Gates Package — page 1101

If you don't know how widespread the yrdinary fluid dynamics of the lation at large, nce genomes has alerted the After a lifetime of neglect by the public at large, disease surveillance is finally having its moment. The world has a lot of catching up to do. In the immediate future, we should: Get better data on COVID's incidence. If you don't know how widespread the virus is in your community, it's hard to make good decisions about vaccination strategies and things like closing schools and businesses. Often, especially in developing countries, the government's data on COVID comes from testing-- which isn't being done widely enough in many places--and from outdated data gathered in single surveys conducted in particular populations, such as health care workers or blood donors. Given the extraordinary fluid dynamics of the current outbreak with multiple successive waves of infection , it is critical that surveillance data be available in real time. This may be true of future pandemics. Outdated data are not only often not helpful, they can frequently be misleading. With timely, representative surveys of the population at large, countries can gain crucial insights that will guide efforts to slow the spread of COVID, including the most effective ways to use nonpharmaceutical interventions while accelerating economic recovery and targeting lockdowns to only the places where they're necessary. Expand genomic sequencing. Africa's ability to sequence genomes has alerted the world to at least two COVID variants. We will be able to do this even better than we can now if we build up the world's sequencing capacity by supporting the Africa Pathogen Genomics Initiative, a network of labs across the continent that are able to share genomic data with each other. This model is being