It Took A Global Pandemic For the CDC To Create A Disease-Forecasting Center

Six major global pandemics later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday that it will create a new disease-forecasting center to meet the longstanding need to monitor emerging health threats.

The CDC’s latest effort is to use data to “model and forecast public health concerns and share information in real-time to activate governmental, private sector, and public actions in anticipation of threats both domestically and abroad.”

“This is an amazing opportunity for CDC and public health as we stand up the country’s first government-wide public health forecasting center,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a statement.

The Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics will receive funding from the American Rescue Plan to focus on three key aspects: predicting outbreaks, expanding data sharing, and strengthening intergovernmental communication.

Dylan George, who will serve as director for operations of the new forecasting center, said in the announcement that the fight against pandemics needs to move at a faster pace and larger scale.

As the world has seen since the pandemic started, viruses like COVID-19 can cause global devastation overnight.

More than 4 million people around the world have died of the recent coronavirus and health experts have warned of more pandemic-related problems due to new variants.