▪A modified pathogen from a European bioresearch lab has caused a global pandemic.
▪It has not been firmly established whether the pathogen was released as a result of lax biosecurity or intentionally with terrorist intent.
▪The event raises broader questions about biosecurity, biosafety, and expanding global research involving modified pathogens.
The World Health Organization declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on January 4, 2025 as infection rates of a SARS/MERS-like coronavirus reached 800 million globally, killing 25 million to date (about 3.125 percent of those infected).10That's from Appendix B: 2019 Global Security Forum Scenarios, page 20.
The United States, Europe, Northeast Asia, and the Middle East have been particularly hard hit by the illness. Few countries have been left unaffected by the outbreak, and the global economy has dipped into recession. Though against World Health Organization and World Trade Organization agreements, widespread travel bans have been enacted between multiple countries. The International Monetary Fund has dramatically increased non-concessional lending and has directed member countries to exercise monetary expansion and fiscal stimulus measures to offset slowing economies globally.
The virus has been identified as humanmade, linked to a research strain from a laboratory in Berlin, Germany. The modified pathogen was a coronavirus like the one responsible for sudden-acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and it was designed and replicated for research into treatment that might have application for future disease outbreaks. The incident further raises concerns of laboratory biosecurity and biosafety, which have been significantly underinvested in and understudied amid a revolution and dramatic global expansion in bioscience research related to microbe manipulation.11
The outbreak rapidly spread from its primary case at Berlin Tegel Airport to a range of connecting international destinations. It has not been established whether the release of the pathogen was purposeful or accidental. The release of the virus has been claimed by multiple terrorist groups as a deliberate act of violence, but following an inquiry by U.S. health agencies and the intelligence community, the surgeon general of the United States announced that none of these groups possess the skill and access to materials necessary to have created it or to have acquired the specific strain. A state-sponsored attack has also been ruled out.
Two leading theories on the origin of the virus are now under close examination, both centered on a laboratory employee who is believed to have been the index case (“patient zero”). The first theory is that the pathogen was intentionally smuggled out and then released by the laboratory-employed person of interest. The individual had access to the pathogen, had academic background in infectious disease transmission, and had espoused extreme views on climate change and human overpopulation online. The second theory is that the release of the virus may have been inadvertent and the result of poor biosecurity at the facility. The laboratory has been closed for the past three months, following its established connection to the pathogen. In this time, multiple safety and security issues have been identified that could have led to inadvertent infection of the person of interest.
The person of interest was infected with the strain either unintentionally or in an attempt to or in the course of infecting others at Tegel Airport. He boarded a flight from Tegel for what he claimed was a planned personal vacation to New York, where he transited through John F. Kennedy International Airport and the virus further spread. The patient was hospitalized a day after his arrival in New York City and quickly quarantined, but not before spreading the infection in five key locations in downtown Manhattan, from which it rapidly spread to New Jersey, Connecticut, and to other U.S. and global cities via contact during his transit through JFK Airport. The person of interest recovered from the illness and was released to German authorities and returned to Berlin. He committed suicide last week while under house arrest and after his identity was revealed in German media, which was quickly picked up as headline news globally. He maintained his innocence and blamed poor biosecurity practices at the laboratory for the release. He expressed great guilt at having been patient zero.In the three months since its release, the virus spread rapidly across Europe, North America, Northeast Asia, and the Middle East. The disease is transmissible during the prodromal period, during which carriers show only mild and, in some cases, unnoticeable symptoms. The novel nature of the pathogen means very low immunity across the population. There is no known existing treatment or prevention method (vaccine or medicine).
The virus is highly transmissible via direct, person-to-person contact, and the fatality rate is significant (around 3 percent). Global drug manufacturers working in collaboration with national biodefense researchers in countries around the globe are surging to develop a treatment and vaccine, but they are months away from a workable trial.
10. In comparison, the Spanish flu of 1918-1919 infected about 500 million people worldwide (about one-third of global population) and killed 20-50 million (4-10 percent of those infected).11. Rocco Casagrande, “Federal Funding for Biosafety Research is Critically Needed,” CSIS, CSIS Brief, August 6, 2019, https://www.csis.org/analysis/federal-funding-biosafety-research-critically-needed.
Spooky.
