1Day Sooner - Pandemic Preparedness

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We can’t cut corners, but we should also be willing to try new things. That’s how we developed multiple vaccines against COVID-19 in record time. The threat of pandemics will not disappear, and may grow even greater as factors like climate change and globalization facilitate the rapid spread of new diseases. So how do we make things go faster?

### Challenge trials in emerging pandemics: UK pandemic ethics “accelerator”

In the early stages of a future pandemic-potential outbreak, time is of the essence. Human challenge studies can be excellent tools to study the traits of a disease, and provide unique information on things like correlates of protection, infectiousness, and pathogenesis. But exposing volunteers to a new disease is ethically very complex, which is why we started thinking about how to do our homework ahead of time. The result was [The Ethics of Controlled Human Infection Model Studies for Mitigating Pandemic Risks](https://drive.google.com/file/d/19S1yGtwYYy0nvzmb_Lz-b2SIG0R-yjXf/view) report, sponsored by us and developed by the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics as part of the [UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator.](https://ukpandemicethics.org/) Read about the report and launch event [here.](https://www.1daysooner.org/1day-sooner-blog/pearl-of-wisdom-pandemic-preparedness-amp-prevention)

### Learning from Pandemic Policy: Operation Warp Speed 2

**Operation Warp Speed** was the US government effort to concentrate funding and regulatory support on the development of the COVID-19 vaccines. With OWS, the world saw successful, cutting-edge mRNA vaccines deployed in record time — not even a year after the pandemic was declared. 1Day Sooner advocates for the adoption of the Operation Warp Speed model for other diseases, especially ones we know have high pandemic-causing potential.

Following our [Operation Warp Speed conference](https://www.1daysooner.org/1day-sooner-blog/ows2) in Washington, D.C., in November 2022, 1Day Sooner published our white paper: _[Operation Warp Speed 2.0: Accelerating the Next Generation of COVID-19 Vaccines and Treatments](https://www.1daysooner.org/operation-warp-speed-2/)_. This paper includes policy recommendations for how best to institutionalize the successes of the original Warp Speed to similarly accelerate medical countermeasures against future outbreaks as well as other medical products of high social value. We focus on what we consider to be the most promising areas — regulatory authorization and market shaping incentives (advance market commitments).

### Advanced Market Commitments

Vaccine development is extremely expensive and it can be difficult to ensure that the market will allow vaccine developers to recoup their research and manufacturing costs. This, in turn, demotivates would-be developers from conducting research.

An **advance market commitment (AMC)** circumvents this problem by guaranteeing a profitable 

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