Pandemic prevention

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Pandemic prevention is the organization and management of preventive measures against pandemics. Those include measures to reduce causes of new infectious diseases and measures to prevent outbreaks and epidemics from becoming pandemics.

It is not to be mistaken for pandemic preparedness or mitigation (e.g. against COVID-19) which largely seek to mitigate the magnitude of negative effects of pandemics, although the topics may overlap with pandemic prevention in some respects.

Some biosafety and public health researchers contend that certain pandemic prevention efforts themselves carry risk of triggering pandemics (e.g. wildlife virus sampling), though not engaging in any form of sampling also carries the risk of being unprepared for future spillover events and being unaware of future pandemic pathogens.

On 6 May 2024, the White House released an official policy to more safely manage medical research projects involving potentially hazardous pathogens, including viruses and bacteria, that may pose a risk of a pandemic.^[1][2]