WHO Simulates Our Next Pandemic

Five years on from the COVID-19 pandemic, some of us are trying hard to forget all about mask mandates, quarantines, and deadly disease. But not the World Health Organization. Last week, the WHO led an effort to combat a new pandemic—this one, thankfully, hypothetical. Representatives from 15 countries (but not the US) participated in the "mammothpox" scenario, where a fictional orthopoxvirus was unknowingly unleashed on the world as a multinational team of scientists and a film crew excavated woolly mammoth remains in the Arctic. After they traveled home to their respective countries, a familiar scenario played out with "uncontrolled spread" of a lethal illness, leading to "overwhelmed" ICUs, according to documents obtained by the Telegraph.

Mammothpox was envisioned as having a death rate somewhere between mpox and smallpox (0.1% to 30%). Though the disease is entirely imaginary, the exercise itself was based on real science. "Scientific research has demonstrated that ancient viruses can remain viable in permafrost for thousands of years," reads a briefing document. As permafrost thaws due to climate change, there are "concerns about the potential release of pathogens previously unknown to modern medicine." The documents offer "rare insight into how the WHO and its member states might react and coordinate in the event of a new pandemic," the Telegraph reports.

Collaboration was key to the two-day exercise. Individual countries were given different pieces of information that, if shared with the group, would make it easier to contain the spread of mammothpox. Countries were also handed certain policies—open or closed borders, for instance—prompting "discussions around how we could harmonize those approaches," says WHO senior adviser Dr. Scott Dowell. Mammothpox was ultimately contained, showing "that when countries lead and partners connect, the world is better prepared," WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says, per the Independent. However, the WHO acknowledged containing a real outbreak is likely to be far more complicated. (More World Health Organization stories.)