Virology labs can play important roles in the eradication of infectious disease around the world, but they must be stringently and transparently regulated. They

Virology labs can play important roles in the eradication of infectious disease around the world, but they must be stringently and transparently regulated. They are needed because if we have a natural outbreak of an infectious novel virus, labs need to be able to rapidly isolate, identify and characterize (sequence) the virus. From there vaccines can be made, mode of transmission can be analyzed, etc. However, there's a huge risk - concentrating all these viruses in one place means accidents can result in infection of lab workers or other releases. There are many examples, such as the 1978 smallpox case in Birmingham: "It turned out that the building that Parker worked in also contained a research laboratory, one of a handful where smallpox was studied by scientists who were trying to contribute to the eradication effort. Some papers reported that the lab was badly mismanaged, with important precautions ignored because of haste. (The doctor who ran the lab died by suicide shortly after Parker was diagnosed.) Somehow, smallpox escaped the lab to infect an employee elsewhere in the building. Through sheer luck and a rapid response from health authorities, including a quarantine of more than 300 people, the deadly error didn’t turn into an outright pandemic." Vox Mar 2019 (pre-pandemic) As fas as Sars-CoV-2, it's very plausible that it accidentally escaped from the Wuhan lab, which housed bats and mice infected with a whole variety of bat coronaviruses and which had a very active coronavirus research program. The lack of governmental transparency in the early days also helped the virus spread, i.e. an early quarantine was possible but was not implemented. Probably the only real long-term fix will involve a lot more spending on public health infrastructure and vaccination globally. At present the virus is circulating in poorer communities around the world and new variants are likely to continue to be spawned as a result.