December 8, 2021 – Today, Amesh Adalja, MD, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, provided expert testimony at a congressional hearing about strengthening biosecurity and biosurveillance practices and systems.
The hearing was convened by the United States House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee: Asia, the Pacific, Central Asia, and Nonproliferation. In his testimony, Dr. Adalja reflected on surveillance systems, and identified strategies that, with additional investment, could help advance the country’s preparedness for future pandemics.
“The passive status quo makes us much more vulnerable to infectious disease threats [because] we lack full situational awareness of the microbial threats that we are facing now and will face in the future,” said Dr. Adalja.” We should complement the broad sampling of animal species with a more targeted type of surveillance focused on sampling of viruses present in patients in clinical environments.”
He recommended:
Read the full testimony. (PDF)