USAID unveils project to prevent viral pandemics

In a policy paper published in Science, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and others announced plans to start the Global Virome Project (GVP) which aims to take a pro-active approach to identifying viruses in animal reservoirs that pose a threat to humans and may spark costly epidemics. The program will build off of the USAID's Emerging Pandemic Threats (PREDICT) global pilot project that began in 2009 and has identified over 1,000 virus species that pose a threat to humans.

The group estimates that between 631,000 to 827,000 undiscovered viral species exist in animal hosts that may be capable of infecting humans. Over 10 years, the group proposes to discover the "substantial majority" of such viruses in animal reservoirs for about $1.2 billion...