Sustained research fund and dedicated research center for preparing next pandemic

Jia, Hongpeng; Wu, Min

The current COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus is imposing a great threat to human lives and international panic that is not seen since WWII, resulting in financial crisis, daily life disturbance, transportation shutdown, industry disruption, and countries/cities lockdown in every corner of the globe. The inability to effectively contain the virus indicates that our investment and attention in research, prevention, and treatment development for this type of deadly viruses is insufficient, considering it has been 17 years since the brother coronavirus, SARS-CoV outbreak. The biggest lesson learned from the acrimonious past experiences is that humans quickly lose memory and do not continue to support related research when a pandemic is gone. It is the very time for the government, industry, and private foundations to work together to respond to this wake-up call and to take extraordinary measures to sustain the research support and establish comprehensive research centers. Only this level response may give us a hope to prepare the future and adequately deal with the next potential pandemic caused by emerging devastating viral infections.