The COVID-19 is a horrendous pandemic that has devastated the world. Still, people are fighting back against it; for instance, “the total number of COVID-19 vaccinations administered in California has reached 15 million” since educators who contact children had become eligible on March 1 to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. However, COVID-19 might not be the last pandemic the world will face. Therefore, it is inevitable to look at emerging infectious threats that have the potential to erupt into global pandemics.

Before COVID-19, SARS and MERS outbreaks had already warned people about viruses that originate in animals. This type of virus, which is increasingly likely to spread zoonotic diseases that come from animals, will cause future pandemics as people continue to encroach on animal habitats.

Moreover, “60% of 330 emerging infectious diseases” since the 1940s have been identified as being zoonotic, which foreshadows that the virus will happen more often than people might generally think. In addition, the likelihood of outbreaks increases when animals and people more frequently come into close contact. Infectious threats will have never been easier to escalate and spread globally.

As experienced with the current pandemic, people realized that developments in vaccine technologies can alleviate the global crisis.

Nevertheless, at the outset millions lost their lives to COVID-19 because of the lack of treatments and the limited national systems for tracking the pandemic spread. People focus now on drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics against COVID-19 whereas many diseases identified as having a high potential to cause future pandemics are currently neglected. This means that if any of these diseases turn pandemic, millions of lives could be lost again.

In order to prepare for future crises, we need to dedicate effort to understanding the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and explore mistakes in dealing with the current health crisis. Especially the realization of a lack of coordination within governments and international cooperation between countries can reduce the burden of the death toll in future outbreaks.

<Yuri Suh / Portola high school 11th>