Some of these health systems are already in place, but could use a boost to broaden their focus, Bernstein said. Take malaria, for instance: The global push to eradicate diseases like malaria means that many countries have the capacity to analyze blood samples, or “blood spots,” for infectious disease. “Many of the places where there’s malaria are also high-risk places identified in this paper for emerging infections,” Bernstein said. “Why wouldn’t we use those blood spots to do screens for spillover and then figure out where those people came into contact with a species that is causing spillover?”
Places with the highest levels of risk and the lowest levels of investment are natural areas to target with more resources. But it’s important to remember that viruses can spill over any time animals come in greater contact with people, experts said. “Everyone is at risk, and these hotspots of viral sharing in our backyard exist everywhere,” Carlson said. “We should think about every single grid cell on this map, where there’s people and animals together, as somewhere the next pandemic could start.”
This will require a more complex understanding of climate change than ever before. It’s not just that higher temperatures are causing heat waves; it’s not just that heat is causing droughts, wildfires, and ice melt. It’s that all of those things are driving animals into entirely new territory, weakening their bodies in the process and making them more vulnerable to illness—and then introducing them to unknown dangers and interactions. And humans, similarly uprooted by natural catastrophes, are at greater risk than ever. It is impossible to predict exactly how all of these factors will intertwine. But as a starting point, we need to start tracking them—and we need to start building plans for what happens next.