Roadmap for the development of disease control strategies for coronaviruses

• How can we establish effective and affordable disease control (and prevention) strategies for emerging coronaviruses with spillover/spillback (between wildlife, livestock, pets and humans) and pandemic potential?

• A lack of resources (financial and human) to apply existing technologies for surveillance. Coupled with a lack of sensitive and specific pen-side or rapid diagnostic tests (e.g. lateral flow devices) means we lack the capacity for accessibly global surveillance
• In turn, this leads to an incomplete understanding of coronavirus population dynamics in animal hosts and the transmission risks. If pets or companion animals are involved, reporting is poor, often because of the concerns of protecting the pet against government action
• An incomplete understanding of the drivers for spillover (e.g. land-use changes or viral recombination) means we can’t identify risk areas of transmission. Political will and international co-operation are required to change socio-economic drivers of land-use changes that create conditions for pathogen emergence from wildlife reservoirs
• Reforming/movement strategies of animals due to ongoing resistance from the agricultural sector.  Alternative control strategies are required which will involve lobbying policy decision-makers and establishing a co-ordinated effort globally. This is a barrier to coordination of disease control efforts due to local policies
• Acceptability and feasibility of culling as a control strategy within the agricultural sector sometimes lacking, particularly in low-resource settings where compensation is not available for economic recovery
• A lack of pan-CoV vaccine that is effective across host-species and CoV strains for control
• Addressing spillback from agricultural animals to wildlife – currently ongoing issues in Chile and South America

• Conducting cost-benefit studies to support buy-in from government. This could be supported by social studies to improve the acceptance of the research needs associated with developing control strategies
• Advocating for animal health management of outbreaks to avoid zoonotic disease and communicating these effectively to policy makers by developing policy briefs to ensure that strategies are understandable and accepted by policy decision-makers
• Rapid development of vaccines through improved links between industry and academia for direct knowledge transfer. Collaborating with industry partners to affect regulatory framework blockers
• Improving data sharing, especially for coronaviruses in wildlife, to support the development of epidemiological modelling to identify risk factors and AI-based prediction models
• Establishment of global surveillance capacity for early warning systems/virus discovery and to establish an understanding of population dynamics across as many host species as possible
• Studying the human-animal-environment interfaces and linking these with known drivers of spillover and spillback

• A commitment to long-term surveillance work, including the development of tools for early detection e.g. standardized sequencing protocols or pen-side LFD
• The introduction of compensation schemes for losses due to culling in low- and middle-income regions agricultural workers who may be disproportionately affected by existing control strategies
• Maintaining a population of appropriately trained and employed veterinarians and researchers in government services, veterinary schools, clinical pathology laboratories to conduct the work needed. This also includes the need for BSL3/CL3 facilities and expertise
• Establishing effective mRNA vaccines to reduce the reliance on live attenuated vaccines (LIAV) that are prone to recombination and the emergence of new variants/mutants with an expanded host range

Avian species are known to be reservoirs of Delta- and Gamma-coronaviruses with low risk of zoonotic potential. Birds (in particular poultry) are effective in vivo models for infection to study coronaviruses

Bats are a known reservoir species for Alpha- and Beta-coronaviruses with a higher risk of zoonosis. There is currently a lack of accessible and appropriate bat in vivo model of infection

In general, we lack reagents and resources for many wildlife species making it challenging to study the natural history of these infections