Scaling Biosafety Up During and Down After the COVID-19 Pandemic

Purpose: The aim of this work was to review and analyze changes to the practice of biosafety imposed by pandemics. Methods: A narrative review of the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020 and prior pandemics from the perspective of a working virologist. Results: By definition, pandemics, outbreaks, and other emergencies are transient phenomena. They manifest as waves of events that induce unforeseen needs and present unknown challenges. After a pandemic, the return to normality is as crucial as the scale-up during the exponential growth phase. The COVID-19 pandemic presents an example to study operational biosafety and biocontainment issues during community transmission of infectious agents with established pandemic potential, the propensity to induce severe disease, and the ability to disrupt aspects of human society. Conclusions: Scaling down heightened biocontainment measures after a pandemic is as important as scaling up during a pandemic. The availability of preventive vaccines, and therapeutic drug regimens, should be considered in risk assessments for laboratory studies. There exists the need to preserve situational memory at the personal and institutional levels that can be served by professional societies.