The Abbott https://www.abbott.com Pandemic Defense Coalition is the first global scientific and public health partnership dedicated to the early detection and rapid response to future pandemic threats.
The program will identify new pathogens, analyze potential risk levels, rapidly develop and deploy new diagnostic testing, and assess the public health impact in real time.
The Coalition consists of global collaborators specializing in virus identification, surveillance, sample collection, testing, and data analytics. The process to identify potential new viral threats begins with physicians across the network identifying patients with unknown conditions that they can’t treat or diagnose.
Next, samples from the patients are tested, followed by genetic sequencing and analyses to spot trends and identify peculiarities that may indicate an emerging threat or outbreak. If a potential threat is discovered, Abbott will quickly develop diagnostic testing to assist in containment efforts.
The sequences of the viruses that are found will be published in a public database so that health officials and laboratories can work together to identify if it’s a novel strain or a virus that has previously been detected.
Abbott’s growing network of partners includes:
- Columbia/Wisconsin One Health Consortium at the Universidad Nacional de Columbia
- Faculty of Medicine, Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand
- Institut de Recherche en Sante, de Surveillance Epidemiologique et de Formations, Dakar, Senegal
- KRISP, Genomic Centre of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa
- Rush University system for health, Chicago
- University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica
- Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
- YRG Care, Chennai, India
Gavin Cloherty, PhD, Head of Infectious Disease Research at Abbott explained, “This will help the global health community stay one step ahead of the next viral threat and allows Abbott to use our expertise and technology to quickly develop tests to address them. Abbott along with the global collaboration, will enable scientists and researchers to learn valuable lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and apply the knowledge to future pandemics.