Experts in Johns Hopkins worry about next pandemic

NEW YORK - Experts in the Johns Hopkins University in the United States continue to worry that the country's response is inadequate to manage an outbreak of another global infectious disease, even after the three years of COVID-19.

In an article on the university's website, the experts said that various missteps related to tracking outbreak and testing data, communicating mitigation strategies such as masking, and supporting frontline health care workers hobbled the national response while diminishing trust in public health institutions.

"I'm not sure if we are better prepared for the next pandemic," the article cited Crystal Watson, a senior scholar at the Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Health Security, as saying during a briefing on Wednesday in the university.

"But we've seen a real degradation in the public health workforce, trust in government, and trust in public health. These are things that we need to build back up before we can be prepared for the next event. There is a lot of investment and rebuilding we need to do," said Watson.

Beth Blauer, associate vice provost of Public Sector Innovation, said that "we were caught flat footed in this pandemic, particularly with the data infrastructure" needed to track infections, deaths, and other measures.

"We rapidly were able to scale up at the state, local, and federal levels, but all signals are pointing to the fact that those were not sustained training, that they were temporary measures, that there aren't a lot of resources or efforts going into a national (public health) data infrastructure," the expert said.