The Board of the new European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) has agreed on a list of three threat categories of life-threatening or otherwise seriously harmful hazards to health that the EU should prioritise in its crisis preparedness.
The list of priority threats presented on Tuesday 12 July includes pathogens with high pandemic potential, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats, as well as threats related to antimicrobial resistance.
The exercise of identifying these priority threats is a provision of the HERA Work Plan 2022 (Task 1, Deliverable 10) (see EUROPE 12888/20) and was carried out in collaboration with other Commission services, EU agencies, but also international experts.
This list will allow HERA to better target actions to be taken, in particular in terms of coordination and improving the accessibility of critical medical countermeasures related to the three priority threats. Thus, based on these priorities, HERA may undertake initiatives to address possible vulnerabilities or strategic dependencies in the development, production, procurement or distribution of relevant medical countermeasures.
The need to update the list of these priority threats will be assessed annually.
Link to the HERA Work Plan for 2022: https://aeur.eu/f/2lp (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)