From PREDICT to prevention, one pandemic later

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic began only a few weeks after the end of PREDICT-2, the last-standing United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats funding programme, which supported a decade of virology, ecology, and epidemiology around the world. Since 2009, PREDICT worked with more than 60 countries to build capacity and strengthen zoonotic pathogen surveillance, and identified at least 931 novel virus species from 145 000 samples of wildlife, livestock, and humans.