From academia to a country-wide response: contribution of university laboratories on the surveillance of emerging viruses in South America

Pandemic preparedness involves the contribution of several actors in society. Global response agencies such as WHO and WOAH, as well as local human/animal health institutions, play an essential role in monitoring emerging pathogens. Unfortunately, the epidemiological situation changes drastically during emergencies, and resources are always limited. During the last few years, several pathogens, mainly zoonotic-related viruses, have emerged worldwide, impacting health systems and reinforcing the need to maintain continuous surveillance to monitor the impact of these emerging pathogens on public health. Low- and middle-income countries have required the establishment of strategic alliances between different sectors to improve the coverage of this monitoring. For several years, academia has supported surveillance activities, and it has played an essential role in developing and transferring adapted methodologies to improve the response during viral outbreaks, mainly relevant during the last SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Here, we present the evidence of the contribution of local university laboratories to surveillance in some Latin American countries and highlight the relevance of this contribution to expanding the regional capacity to monitor endemic and emerging viruses, to create sustainable inter-institutional - governmental collaborative networks, and to guarantee long-term surveillance to generate high-quality data and promote informed decision-making based on local conditions.