The Independent Task Force on COVID-19 and Other Pandemics

The COVID-19 pandemic is a striking example of an emerging disease caused by an animal-origin pathogen, SARS-CoV-2, an RNA virus with its closest relatives identified in bats in China and Southeast Asia. The emergence of zoonotic RNA viruses like SARS-CoV-2 from wildlife, livestock, or domestic animals, is an urgent and growing threat to public health. Understanding how SARS-CoV-2 and other RNA virus outbreaks originate can guide how we can more effectively prevent, mitigate, or respond to future emerging infectious diseases (EIDs). Increasing outbreaks in recent decades have been driven by many factors including human and livestock population growth coupled with expanding human-animal-environment interfaces, changing patterns of land use, climate change, international travel, and global trade. These outbreaks have common characteristics, including zoonotic spillover from an animal reservoir host to humans, with or without involvement of another animal transmission host. These features highlight the importance of a One Health approach to design relevant, feasible, and implementable solutions to prevent, mitigate, and respond rapidly to future outbreaks.

The Independent Task Force is a group of internationally renowned scientists with diverse disciplinary expertise in human, animal, and public health, virology, epidemiology, wildlife biology, ecology, and EIDs. Twelve members were convened in June 2020 as a Task Force within the Lancet COVID-19 Commission. In November 2021 with the addition of 2 new expert members, they formed the Independent Task Force to assess available evidence on what drove the origins and early spread of COVID-19 and provide evidence-based recommendations to reduce the impact of and improve responses to outbreaks. Their critical review of the literature, interviews with other scientists, and extensive discussions have culminated in a report published in October 2022 in the leading journal Proceedings of the National Academy of the USA (PNAS).