The John Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201 in New York on October 18, 2019. The exercise illustrated areas where public and private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences. It brought together business, government, security and public health leaders to address a hypothetical global pandemic scenario and also featured a live virtual experience to outline the difficult policy choices that could arise in the midst of a severe pandemic.
A statement from the John Hopkins Center for Health Security reads: “In recent years, the world has seen a growing number of epidemic events, amounting to approximately 200 events annually.
“These events are increasing, and they are disruptive to health, economies, and society.
“Managing these events already strains global capacity, even absent a pandemic threat.
“Experts agree that it is only a matter of time before one of these epidemics becomes global – a pandemic with potentially catastrophic consequences.
“A severe pandemic, which becomes ‘Event 201,’ would require reliable cooperation among several industries, national governments, and key international institutions.”
Arnaud Bernaert, Head of Shaping the Future of Health and Healthcare, said the event was key to responding and preventing future outbreaks.
He noted: “We are in a new era of epidemic risk, where essential public-private cooperation remains challenged, despite being necessary to mitigate risk and impact.
“Now is the time to scale up cooperation between national governments, key international institutions and critical industries, to enhance global capacity for preparedness and response.”
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“They were practicing this before it came out, it was supposed to have been a live exercise of dealing with a pandemic, but they clearly didn’t learn anything.”
But, Event 201 was not a one-off, as leaders have been running similar exercised for years.
These include “Dark Winter,” examining the challenges of a biological attack on the US, “Atlantic Storm,” asking NATO leaders to respond collaboratively to a bioterrorist attack and most recently, “Clade X,” calling on US government leaders to make difficult national security decisions in the face of a global crisis.
In addition, Bill Gates, one of the main stakeholders of Event 201, has been calling for reform on pandemic response since the Ebola outbreak of 2014.