Clade X was a day-long pandemic tabletop exercise conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security on May 15, 2018, in Washington, DC. Educational Themes Built into the Scenario
In the year-long process of developing the exercise, we identified a number of learning objectives that were derived from actual disease outbreaks in recent years. The following themes were built into the Clade X scenario:
Some epidemics evolve very rapidly.
A moderately contagious and moderately lethal respiratory virus can lead to a catastrophic pandemic.
Rapid diagnostic tests are not available for novel pathogens.
Public health capabilities for disease surveillance and response are weak in many countries.
Quarantine and surveillance policies and practices are inconsistent across countries.
It is often very difficult to determine the origin of an epidemic and attribute causality.
It typically takes years to develop and produce new medical countermeasures (MCMs) against a novel pathogen.
There is limited capacity for public health response to epidemics in the United States and globally.
Public health quarantine laws and surveillance systems are inconsistent across states.
Hospitals have limited stockpiles of essential supplies and medications and limited surge capacity, which hinders resiliency.
Epidemics can have substantial economic and societal consequences.
The same biotechnology revolution that enables rapid progress in countermeasures development lowers the bar to the development of, and deliberate or accidental release of, a novel pathogen
