Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2022 Dec 1;27(4):247-254.
doi: 10.1089/apb.2022.0008. Epub 2022 Nov 23.

Scaling Biosafety Up During and Down After the COVID-19 Pandemic

Dirk P Dittmer  1 , Anthony B Eason  1 , Angelica Juarez  1
Affiliations
Review

Scaling Biosafety Up During and Down After the COVID-19 Pandemic

Dirk P Dittmer et al. Appl Biosaf. .

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of this work was to review and analyze changes to the practice of biosafety imposed by pandemics.

Methods: A narrative review of the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020 and prior pandemics from the perspective of a working virologist.

Results: By definition, pandemics, outbreaks, and other emergencies are transient phenomena. They manifest as waves of events that induce unforeseen needs and present unknown challenges. After a pandemic, the return to normality is as crucial as the scale-up during the exponential growth phase. The COVID-19 pandemic presents an example to study operational biosafety and biocontainment issues during community transmission of infectious agents with established pandemic potential, the propensity to induce severe disease, and the ability to disrupt aspects of human society.

Conclusions: Scaling down heightened biocontainment measures after a pandemic is as important as scaling up during a pandemic. The availability of preventive vaccines, and therapeutic drug regimens, should be considered in risk assessments for laboratory studies. There exists the need to preserve situational memory at the personal and institutional levels that can be served by professional societies.

Keywords: BSL-3; COVID; HIV; SARS-CoV-2; virus.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

No competing financial interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Model of the three phases of a pandemic. (A) HIV and (B) SARS-CoV-2.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Variation of infectious agents. NPC, nasopharyngeal cavity; BAL, bronchoalveolar lavage.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Gallo RC, Sarin PS, Gelmann EP, et al. Isolation of human T-cell leukemia virus in acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Science. 1983;220(4599):865–867. - PubMed
    1. Barre-Sinoussi F, Chermann JC, Rey F, et al. Isolation of a T-lymphotropic retrovirus from a patient at risk for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Science. 1983;220(4599):868–871. - PubMed
    1. Peck KM, Burch CL, Heise MT, et al. Coronavirus host range expansion and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus emergence: biochemical mechanisms and evolutionary perspectives. Annu Rev Virol. 2015;2(1):95–117. - PubMed
    1. Robert MA, Stewart-Ibarra AM, Estallo EL. Climate change and viral emergence: evidence from Aedes-borne arboviruses. Curr Opin Virol. 2020;40:41–47. doi: 10.1016/j.coviro.2020.05.001 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Foster KR, Jenkins MF, Toogood AC. The Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic of 1793. Sci Am. 1998;279(2):88–93. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources