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Agtech infrastructure for pandemic preparedness

Nature Biotechnology volume 38, pages 1025–1027 (2020)Cite this article

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To the Editor — The world has witnessed multiple outbreaks of epidemic and pandemic disease over the past 20 years, including four outbreaks of Ebola virus in Africa, an outbreak of Zika virus in South America, and three outbreaks of respiratory infections caused by novel β-coronavirus strains, including the latest (SARS-CoV-2) being responsible for the current COVID-19 pandemic1,2,3. At the time of writing, more than 17 million confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections have been reported worldwide and nearly 700,000 people have died from the disease3. Some of the common themes emerging from these outbreaks include the lack of preparedness of the regional, national and global health authorities, insufficient supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE), and insufficient hospital capacity to address the sudden influx of patients with acute disease. This was exacerbated by the scarcity of reagents, personnel and infrastructure for population-wide testing, diagnosis, and essential track-and-trace strategies to reduce R, the effective reproduction number4. Here, we note how approaches used in agtech to genotype germplasm could be adapted to testing in the context of a pandemic.

For localized outbreaks and epidemics, health authorities with sufficient financial resources can turn to outside providers for help to address local shortages of personnel, equipment and reagents. However, the current COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a concurrent demand for the same resources across the planet. Stockpiles were rapidly exhausted in many places, as predicted by earlier studies of actual and hypothetical outbreaks of novel influenza virus strains5,6, leaving governments scrambling to replenish essential items. In some cases, there has been effective resource allocation and sharing according to need, but there have also been examples of countries attempting to ring-fence supplies or resources at the expense of others, especially for medical apparatus, PPE and reagents such as testing kits7.

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Fig. 1: Agtech infrastructure and pandemic preparedness.

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Acknowledgements

Funding provided by the Global Institute for Food Security. S.R.W. is grateful for insightful comments and suggestions from Lorne Babiuk.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Global Institute for Food Security, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

    Steven R. Webb

  2. TRM Ltd, Scarborough, North Yorkshire, UK

    Richard M. Twyman

  3. AgritecKnowledge LLC, Royal Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, UK

    Maurice Moloney

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  1. Steven R. Webb
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  2. Richard M. Twyman
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Correspondence to Steven R. Webb.

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Webb, S.R., Twyman, R.M. & Moloney, M. Agtech infrastructure for pandemic preparedness. Nat Biotechnol 38, 1025–1027 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-0654-5

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