Applied Biosecurity in the Face of Epidemics and Pandemics: The COVID-19 Pandemic

Biosecurity as a discipline remains largely defined by institutional-level practices unbounded by the guidelines and checklists prevalent in the field of biosafety. The result is a high-level of interpretation at the individual and institutional level of defining and implementing biosecurity. At its core, biosecurity frameworks are largely anchored to a mirrored process of risk assessment and management. Therefore, biosecurity is still rooted in the fields of threat and vulnerability assessment, analysis, and management. The aperture of threat and vulnerability management may at first seem contrary to the overall field of public health where emerging infectious disease, and the negative consequences, are more commonly perceived as risks. However, in the spectrum of threat to vulnerability to risk (see Chaps. “Redefining Biosecurity by Application in Global Health, Biodefense, and Developing Technologies” and “The Biothreat Assessment as a Foundation for Biosecurity”) infectious disease as an entity emerges as a threat. The ability or inability to respond and defend from infectious disease can be characterized as vulnerabilities. The negative consequences (e.g., spread of, infection, mortality, economic impacts) exist as a probability of occurrence, or simply, a risk. This is increasingly evident at the time of composition of this chapter and this book during the global COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter explores the parallels and distinctions of biosecurity-related concepts as they apply to the COVID-19 pandemic, lessons learned from previous epidemics and pandemics, and offers suggestions of stronger connectivity to threat and vulnerability management concepts as we inevitably prepare for future epidemics and pandemics.