Trump administration cut pandemic early warning program in September

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/trump-scrapped-pandemic-early-warning-program-system-before-coronavirus

Oliver Milman
Fri 3 Apr 2020 16.02 EDT
Last modified on Fri 3 Apr 2020 17.24 EDT


The Trump administration decided to end a $200m early warning program designed to alert it to potential pandemics just three months before it is believed Covid-19 began infecting people in China.

The project, called Predict, had been run by the US Agency for International Development since 2009. It had identified more than 160 different coronaviruses that had the potential to develop into pandemics, including a virus that is considered the closest known relative to Covid-19.

A decision to wind down the program was made, however, in September, just three months before the first reports of people becoming infected with Covid-19 in Wuhan, China. The end of the program saw the departure of dozens of scientists and analysts working to identify potential pandemics in countries around the world, including China.

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“I’m not confident we will learn the lessons from this, though. We saw the same thing happen after Ebola and then Zika. We are always behind with pandemics, we are flying blind. We have hit the snooze button several times and now here’s the big one.”

It’s not clear whether a continuation of the project would have dampened the current pandemic, although the Trump administration has faced criticism for its preparation before the outbreak. The administration reduced a team working in China on pandemics and has repeatedly attempted to cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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