The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has published its view on the pathogen families that could pose the greatest risk to public health, in a bid to focus and guide preparedness efforts against these threats.
The list of 24 pathogen families, a reference tool to help guide research and development investment in England, is the first specifically designed to consider both global public health threats as well as those most relevant to a UK population.
It provides information on pathogen families where the agency believes further research would be most beneficial to boost preparedness against future biosecurity risks, particularly around diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics. Research and development across a range of other pathogen families not on this list also remains vital.
For each viral family included in the tool, an indicative rating of high, moderate, or low pandemic and epidemic potential is suggested. These ratings are the opinions of scientific experts within UKHSA who have considered routes of transmission and severity of disease arising from pathogens in each family to inform the ratings.
This rating does not indicate which pathogen UKHSA considers most likely to cause the next pandemic, but rather those pathogens requiring increased scientific investment and study.
This includes those pathogens where we need increased vaccine or diagnostics development, or those which may be exacerbated by a changing climate or antimicrobial resistance.
Among the pathogen families where UKHSA is keen to see greater scientific strides made are the coronaviridae family, which includes Covid-19; the paramyxoviridae family which includes Nipah virus; and the orthomyxoviridae family which includes avian influenza.
However, the reference tool is not a detailed threat assessment and the list of families included in this tool is not exhaustive and the families are not ranked.
Priorities and risks will change with updates in epidemiology and progress will be made with the development of diagnostics and countermeasures. Therefore, the tool, which is intended to be updated annually, must be used with other information as appropriate, and represents a snapshot at one point in time.
The tool, which aims to support all aspects of the UK Biological Security Strategy, is just one of a number of UKHSA is using to secure and protect the public’s health. Both UKHSA’s Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre and Diagnostic Accelerator are working closely with academia and industry to identify and prepare for pathogenic threats to UK health and the Priority Pathogens tool will help guide this work.
The full list is here:
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Adenovirus
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Lassa fever
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Norovirus
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Mers
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Ebola (and similar viruses, such as Marburg)
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Flaviviridae (which includes dengue, Zika and hepatitis C)
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Hantavirus
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Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever
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Flu (non-seasonal, including avian)
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Nipah virus
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Oropouche
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Rift Valley fever
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Acute flaccid myelitis
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Human metapneumovirus (HMPV)
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Mpox
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Chikungunya
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Anthrax
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Q fever
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Enterobacteriaceae (such as E. coli and Yersinia pestis, which causes plague)
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Tularaemia
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Moraxellaceae (which cause lung, urine and bloodstream infections)
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Gonorrhoea
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Staphlylococcus
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Group A and B Strep
