Context

• Recently, World Health Organization (WHO) launched a global network of laboratories named as Coronavirus Network (CoViNet) to identify and monitor potentially novel coronaviruses that could emerge shortly.

Background

• The international agency widened its focus by building on its earlier collaboration with the WHO COVID-19 reference laboratory network, which was set up in January 2020 during the pandemic to confirm the disease.
• COVID-19 was the first ‘Disease X’ and it may happen again, warned WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a recent event hosted by the World Economic Forum.

About CoViNet

• It will facilitate and coordinate global expertise and capacities for the early detection, monitoring, and assessment of various coronaviruses.
• Apart from focusing only on SARS-CoV-2, it will also assess other coronaviruses, including Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) with a particular emphasis on enhancing laboratory capacity and surveillance.
• CoViNet comprises 36 laboratories from 21 countries in all six WHO regions, including three Indian laboratories.
• These are the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, the Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Virology in Pune, and the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute.
• CoViNet emphasizes a comprehensive One Health approach encompassing human, animal, and environmental health.

World Health Organisation (WHO)

• Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland
• Founded: 7 April 1948
• Director-General: Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
• Parent organization: United Nations Economic and Social Council