WSi News2020-04-21 15:30:44
The Next Pandemic: How Do We Protect, Detect and Delay?
As the world continues to struggle with the coronavirus pandemic, the global death toll has passed eighty thousand and is set to keep climbing.
Where we end up, and, how long it takes to get things under control and back to ‘normal’ is yet to be determined!
But as those that can (bless them) continue to fight the good fight against the pandemic, the rest of us do the only thing we can do, which is to stay at home, and perhaps start thinking about and planning for the next pandemic. Because, unless the human race goes into a collective period of denial post-COVID-19, there will be a ‘new normal’.
On Monday 23rd March, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged warring parties across the world to lay down their weapons in support of the more significant battle against COVID-19: the common enemy that is now threatening all of humankind.
Even ISIL has issued a travel ban on its members.
Guterres was referring to COVID-19, but you could just as easily apply that statement to a yet unknown, unnamed pathogen that could kill millions and plunge the world in recession or depression in the future.
The human race should see COVID-19 as a stark warning of what a pathogen can do and come to realise that the next one could be something altogether more lethal and more devastating.
Throughout human history, pandemics have cut devastating swathes through human populations. Probably the most notorious of these being the Bubonic Plague or Black Death, which killed hundreds of millions over centuries.
But the development of modern medicines, especially antibiotics and vaccines has created a feeling, certainly, in the developed world, that modern medicine will fix all and that epidemics are things that only happen to people in far off places, and not to us.
But just in the last 102 years pathogens have killed; Spanish Flu 1918-19 - 40-50 million, Asian Flu 1957-58 - 1.1 million, Hong Kong Flu 1968-69 – 1 million.
In more recent times we have seen SARS 2002-03 – 770, Swine Flu – 200 thousand, Ebola - 11.3 thousand and now COVID-19 - ?
So, these outbreaks should not be viewed as isolated events, but as naturally occurring phenomena that will happen again and again….and probably in the not too distant future. Pandemics have the potential to kill in unimaginably large numbers, but what COVID-19 has done is expose how little has been done to prepare for a pandemic and how little has been spent in developing technologies to help counter one.
By contrast, between 2017 and 2018, the total number of deaths as a result of terrorism was 15,952 (Global Terrorism Index) and falling but globally we have spent multi-millions and continue to do so, on developing and deploying technologies to counter that threat.
The good news is that much of this technology can be used to help to battle pandemics.
The Post COVID-19 World
It the post-pandemic period there will be much discussion and analysis of the various approaches taken by different governments around the world, and it should be relatively easy to identify what approaches worked well and what didn’t.
This analysis should presumably be led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and lead to an agreed set of protocols being established and actioned worldwide as soon as a potential pandemic alert is given. The object will be to detect, contain and delay the spread of the virus until a vaccine is developed or the virus runs its course. It sounds easy when you say it like that!
It is too early to say which approach is best, the ‘little by little, herd theory’ approach of the UK and US or the ‘early intervention’ approach of Taiwan and other Asian countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong. But my money is on the Asian approach.
Taiwan started taking the temperatures of arriving passengers at airports almost as soon as the Chinese confirmed that the virus posed a threat, and all arrivals were required to self-isolate immediately for 14 days. Self-isolation was enforced by using the GPS on their mobile phones to ensure that they did not leave their isolation address and phoning them twice a day to confirm they were still there and had not just left their phone and gone out. They also did much good work tracing and imposing self-isolation on other people they may have been in contact with such as families, friends and colleagues.
Thanks to security spending, the first and most apparent technology we already have is thermal image cameras. They were quickly introduced to identify people with temperatures at airports, ports, offices, events, prisons - anywhere where there was a large mass of people. They are a quick, easy and remote way of determining whether somebody has a temperature and is, therefore, a potential virus carrier.
Germany’s Dermalog, along with the Thai Immigration Authority, have gone one stage further. As part of a pilot scheme, they have integrated their new fever detection system into the biometric border control system at Don Mueang International Airport in Bangkok.
This pilot scheme has the obvious advantage of instantaneously alerting the authorities of any passenger who may pose a ‘virus risk’. The authorities can then take immediate steps to mitigate that risk by instructing the individual to self-isolate or in more extreme circumstances, place them in immediate quarantine.
This technology can and should be integrated into new, and retrofitted or existing biometric border control systems. It can also be integrated into existing airport and port security screening systems, such as body scanners and metal detectors.
But border entry points are easy to control, and the technology helps only once the alarm has been raised.
What about passengers that arrived before the alarm was raised?
Once in country, arriving passengers disappear into the local population and it is difficult to track them down.
In the recent issue of BORDER SECURITY REPORT, it was outlined how the Passenger Name Record (PNR) system could be used to trace the movements of recently arrived passengers. PNR is a requirement of the computer reservation system and shares part of a passenger’s itinerary between travel agencies and airlines. There is currently no industry-wide standard for the layout and content of PNR, nor has it been universally adopted. But if PNR (or something similar) were to be mandated worldwide, with the inclusion of a contact mobile phone number and the intended address/s for the first ten days of any trip. It would allow the authorities the option to phone or send an alert to the passenger initially directing them to take appropriate action or, if necessary, they could send officials to the listed address or track the individual using their mobile GPS.
The mobile phone GPS can then be used to ensure the individual is following self-isolation directives, as in Taiwan.
Combined with their biometric passport, facial recognition software that is increasingly used on local CCTV systems, could also prove invaluable in tracking down individuals who are possible carriers of the virus. Of course, this would require immigration and border authorities being able to capture and store the data of passengers for a time of, say, ten to fourteen days.
The next problem is tracking down any people that the passenger may have inadvertently infected.
Again, once the authorities have tracked down the passenger, mobile phones may provide a big part of the answer. Mobile phone forensic companies like Basis Tech (UK), Cellebrite (Israel) and MSAB (Sweden) provide incredibly powerful tools in tracing their network of connections. Mobile forensic systems can provide details of where they have been, who they have been calling, and who they are in contact with on social media etc.
Chris Brown of Basis Technology said, “Together with our partners, we have developed a COVID-19 Tracking and Monitoring solution. This solution utilises existing ad-tech technology to remotely provide location history, and future tracking of infected people, which is a game-changer in preventing onward infections and saving lives. The solution is mobile operator independent with no need to download an app. The solution is also GDPR compliant as no personally identifiable data is used. “
The good thing is that most of the systems and technologies already exist and several countries are showing the way when it comes to using data and technology to defeat this virus and the next one.
There would be grave concerns from some quarters about privacy, data protection and foreign governments holding information on visitors for any period, no matter how short a period it may be.
There may also be some cultural differences in our acceptance of such measures, especially in the western democracies.
But the reality is that most of the information needed to track and delay the spread of any new virus we already share routinely, via our online bookings, travel agents, trusted traveller schemes, visa applications and landing cards.
Agreeing on a global system based on one of the widely accepted existing systems would seem an obvious solution.
And using the technology we already have to locate potential carriers together with anybody they may have come into contact with just makes sense.
There has been much talk about being at war with the virus. Governments and countries are on a war footing, with draconian restrictions on civilian populations and economies and manufacturing being redirected to fight the spread of the virus.
It is vital that we see the pandemic threat very much in that context, of being at war, and that temporary restrictions of some rights and privacy in times of crisis is very much in our self-interest.
It is vital that the lessons of COVID-19 are not forgotten, and we are better prepared for the next pandemic, because there will be a next pandemic!
This article appears in the latest issues of World Security Report magazine. Download your copy:
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