WHO tests pandemic response with Arctic ‘mammothpox' outbreak

Telegraph

15-04-2025

The outbreak began when a team of scientists and documentary film-makers excavated the remains of a woolly mammoth in the frozen Arctic tundra.
Within weeks, ICUs were 'overwhelmed' and health systems were struggling to cope. Some countries introduced contact tracing and 'enforced quarantines,' while others took a more laissez-faire approach – and saw the 'uncontrolled spread' of a dangerous new disease.
This is the all-too-familiar scenario that ministers from 15 countries around the world were faced with last week when they gathered to test their readiness for the next pandemic.
The desktop exercise, led from the World Health Organisation's (WHO) headquarters in Geneva, was overseen by Dr Mike Ryan, the no-nonsense director of the agency's Health Emergencies Programme.
It simulated an outbreak of 'Mammothpox,' a deadly but fictional virus from the orthopox family, similar to smallpox (which killed an estimated half a billion people in the century before it was eradicated in 1980) and mpox, a dangerous variant of which is currently surging across central Africa.
The exercise documents, obtained by The Telegraph, give a rare insight into how the WHO and its member states might react and coordinate in the event of a new pandemic.
While the disease depicted was fictitious, the exercise was based on real science and imagines a paleontological dig for mammoths, sabretooth tigers, and other extinct creatures held in the permafrost going horribly wrong.
'Scientific research has demonstrated that ancient viruses can remain viable in permafrost for thousands of years,' says the WHO briefing document. 'The thawing of permafrost due to climate change has raised concerns about the potential release of pathogens previously unknown to modern medicine.'
The virus was potentially lethal and fast-moving, participating health officials were told.
'Mammothpox disease is severe, with a mortality intermediate between Mpox and Smallpox,' say the papers.
Smallpox killed about 30 per cent of those it infected before its eradication. Mpox is much less lethal but is currently exacting a terrible toll, especially on young children in Africa.
'With modest transmissibility and minimal asymptomatic spread it is controllable', they added, but only with 'effective coordinated responses – similar to SARS or Mpox'.
The assembled officials were all told that a 'multinational team of scientists' and a 'film crew' were behind the outbreak. They had travelled into the Arctic to find Mammoth remains being exposed by the retreating permafrost.
In a scene reminiscent of the opening of the film Jurassic Park, the team discovered a 'remarkably well-preserved' specimen and proceeded to thaw and analyse samples of its tissues on site.
They then returned to their respective countries, only to fall ill shortly after, 'presenting with symptoms of a pox-like illness'.
Among the participants in the two-day simulation were representatives from Denmark, Somalia, Qatar, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and Ukraine.
The United States and China did not take part.
Each country was given a 'small piece of the puzzle' to test how well they would share information and collaborate to contain the spread of the virus.
In an echo of the Covid pandemic, one country was told that a symptomatic Arctic researcher had boarded a cruise ship carrying 2,450 passengers and 980 crew.
The vessel effectively became a petri dish for scientists, who gathered data as the virus moved from cabin to cabin, allowing them to calculate the virus's reproduction or R number at between 1.6 and 2.3.
Qatar was told the virus was being spread through large social gatherings and in workplaces, while in Uganda all of its 22 cases were put down to 'household transmission'.
The desktop exercise was held over two days but simulated the first three weeks of the outbreak.
On the second day of the exercise, participants were told that progress in holding back the virus was being hampered by politics and divergent contaminants strategies between states.
Some countries implemented 'strict border controls, banned all international arrivals and restricted internal movement,' the document says. Others maintained 'open borders with minimal restrictions,' relying instead on 'contact tracing, isolation,and quarantine measures'.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, countries like Singapore, South Korea, New Zealand and Taiwan turned their ports and airports into a first-line of defence and tried to stop the virus from getting in altogether. But others, including Britain, were criticised for keeping their borders largely open.
Throughout the simulation, health officials from each of the participating countries joined Zoom calls to share details of how the outbreak was unfolding in their respective towns and cities and debate how to respond.
'Some of the countries were being very strict about border controls and in some cases very close neighbouring countries were being very loose, so on the calls we could have discussions around how we could harmonise those approaches,' said Dr Scott Dowell, a senior adviser at the WHO.
Dr Nedret Emiroglu, a director in the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, said the mammothpox scenario was designed to be 'realistic with the ability to spread around the world'.
But the disease was also designed to be 'controllable if countries worked together,' she told The Telegraph.
While Exercise Polaris was playing out, negotiations on a new 'pandemic treaty' were continuing at the WHO.
After three years of arduous negotiations, including disagreements over plans for the distribution of drugs and vaccines, an agreement on the treaty could be reached as early as Tuesday, sources told The Telegraph.
While the countries involved in the mammothpox exercise were, ultimately, able to band together to contain the virus, a real outbreak would prove much more complicated, the WHO acknowledged.
The question of how to implement a vaccine strategy was not dealt with in the fictional dry run, for example, and the US – the WHO's biggest single funder – is about to leave the body.
Meanwhile, real digs continue in the Siberian permafrost, where the receding ice has sparked a gold rush for scientists and ivory hunters alike.
In 2023, Nasa researchers unfroze a 48,500-year-old 'zombie virus' found alongside frozen mammoth and wolf remains that would be lethal to humans.
And last month, the New York Times revealed that Siberian ivory hunters were scavenging for mammoth remains without concern or precaution for the ancient pathogens they might stumble across.
In total, there are thought to be over 10 million mammoths buried in the arctic permafrost.