As America’s biopharmaceutical companies work around the clock to combat COVID-19, a disease caused by a novel strain of coronavirus, now is an important time to consider how we can prepare for the next public health emergency: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
Dr. Julie Gerberding, executive vice president and chief patient officer at Merck, talked about AMR and the biopharmaceutical industry’s efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
How has past experience combatting SARS, MERS and other infectious diseases informed the biopharmaceutical industry’s work to combat the novel coronavirus today?
From a scientific perspective, there are many lessons learned from past experience with SARS, avian influenza, Zika, Ebola and the 2009 influenza pandemic.
- Fast detection and transparency about reporting is critical. We have been able to do better recognizing the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in China and being transparent about reporting, which is good news. But detection is still a focus for improvement, not just in the United States but in many countries around the world.
- Efforts to contain the virus at its source are worth trying, but you can’t count on them to work. China made heroic efforts to contain the virus, but eventually it spilled over and was transmitted to the rest of the world. There’s a tendency to hope that we can still contain COVID-19 at the local level, but this is an extremely transmissible virus, and those efforts are not likely to be successful in the short run.
- Trustworthy communication is incredibly important. We need people to believe in their federal, state and local leaders and their own doctors, because the kind of advice we are offering is difficult to understand and very challenging to implement...
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