A playbook for harmonization of standards for emergent viral pathogens

Effective clinical and public health decision-making during a pandemic depends on reliable and interoperable clinical diagnostic test results. To ensure trustworthy outcomes, we need widely available and harmonized calibration standards on a shared scale. We present a ‘playbook’ for an inter-laboratory harmonization study that calibrates any available standards against a limited-availability standard issued by a global authority like the World Health Organization (WHO).