COVID-19 and Future Disease X in Circular Economy Transition: Redesigning Pandemic Preparedness to Prevent a Global Disaster

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a world surprisingly unprepared to respond to the new epidemiological scenario, even the developed countries, in spite of warnings from scientists since the 1990s. These alerts warned on the risks of an exponential increase in emergence of potentially pandemic zoonotic infectious diseases related to disruptive ecological niches in different regions of the globe, such as H1N1 Influenza, SARS, MERS, Zika, avian flu, swine flu, and Ebola, and also on the risks of a future and more lethal Disease X. We examine this global public health failure in anticipating and responding to the pandemic, stressing the urgent need for an innovative global pandemic preparedness system in the current transition from linear economy to a circular economy. Evidence provided here indicates that this novel preventive-based and resource-saving preparedness system could contribute to reverse the detrimental impacts of the pandemic on global economy and increase its resilience. Individual protection, contact tracing, and lockdown have proved to be just partially effective to respond to the spillover of viral zoonosis into the human population, and for most of these pathogens, vaccines are not yet available. As for COVID-19 vaccines, in spite of the extraordinary investments and unprecedented advances in innovative vaccines in few months, most of these products are expected to be available to more vulnerable developing countries’ populations only by mid-2022. Furthermore, even when these vaccines are available, constraints such as low efficacy, waning immunity, new concerning COVID-19 variants, adverse events, and vaccine hesitancy might possibly restrict their public health impact and could contribute to aggravate the pandemic scenario. Considering these constraints and the severe global economic and social crises resulting from the lack of adequate preparedness and delayed effective response to COVID-19 and possibly to a future Disease X, we propose a pro-active global eco-social pandemic preparedness system. This novel system, based on One Health paradigm and on artificial intelligence and machine learning, is expected to incorporate “spillover” foresight and management into global preparedness and timely response. Designed to mitigate damage from outbreaks and minimize human morbidity and mortality, this approach to pandemic foresight and preparedness will be key to prevent a global disaster.