Day1: Session 1 – Zoonoses and One Health
From medieval plague routes to bat‑borne spillover and biodiversity loss, Session 1 showed how ecology and land use must be treated as core tools of pandemic prevention rather than background context.
From plague to planetary health: ecology at the heart of pandemic prevention
Session 1 set the tone for the conference by arguing that the next pandemic must be tackled as an ecological as well as a biomedical problem. Three talks traced a line from medieval plague to climate‑driven spillover and modern bat‑borne threats.
Felicia Keesing (Bard College) challenged the idea that pandemic prevention means merely “finding the next pathogen before it finds us.” Instead, she focused on the ‘ecological causes of spillover’: climate change, habitat fragmentation, biodiversity loss, wildlife markets and intensive livestock production. These same drivers also fuel environmental degradation. The “good news”, she argued, is that strategies such as habitat restoration, improved land use and more sustainable livestock systems can simultaneously reduce spillover risk and address climate and biodiversity crises. The “bad news” is that we have often misrepresented what is known: over‑emphasising wet markets while underplaying livestock, using vague language about habitat edges, and failing to clarify whether biodiversity is dangerous or protective. Recent syntheses suggest that ‘biodiversity loss is a major driver of disease risk’, because the “best” zoonotic hosts often thrive in degraded, low‑diversity systems.
Turning to history, Nils Christian Stenseth (UiO) examined Yersinia pestis, the Black Death bacterium. Using statistical models of soil chemistry, climate and rodent ecology, developed from Chinese and US plague reservoirs, his group finds no evidence for persistent natural plague reservoirs in Europe, either historically or today. Instead, repeated European outbreaks during the Second Plague Pandemic likely reflected ‘repeated introductions’ from Eurasian wildlife reservoirs, transported along fur‑trade and other routes. This work illustrates how combining historical sources, genomics and environmental modelling can reveal where dangerous reservoirs can exist and how pathogens move from wildlife to people.
Finally, Peter Hudson (Penn State / Nelson Mandela African Institute) argued that global health was “lucky” with COVID‑19—moderate $R_0$, relatively low fatality, children spared, rapid vaccine platforms—and that ‘pre‑emergence prevention at the ecological source’ is the only realistic way to avert future pandemics. Comparing rodent‑ and bat‑borne zoonoses, he showed how life‑history traits and bridging hosts shape risk.
For the Centre for Pandemics and One Health, the message from Session 1 was clear: surveillance, land‑use policy and biodiversity conservation are core tools of pandemic prevention, not optional extras.
Session 2 – Predicting virus–host interactions and risk assessments
Session 2 highlighted how combining virus–host biology, national immunosurveillance and legal frameworks can turn complex risk assessments into transparent, legitimate public‑health decisions.
Opening the “host doors”: from influenza biology to population immunity and the law
Session 2 combined virology, immunology and legal analysis to explore how societies can better predict pathogen behaviour and translate risk into legitimate public‑health decisions.
Adolfo García‑Sastre (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) described influenza A as a virus family defined by diversity and adaptation, with 19 haemagglutinin and 11 neuraminidase subtypes and a century of pandemics behind it. For an avian strain to become a human pandemic virus, it must pass through four ‘host doors’: entry, replication, evasion of host responses, and assembly/exit. Each door is shaped by species‑specific host factors. For influenza, this includes receptor preferences, internal gene adaptations such as PB2 mutations that boost replication in mammals, and the ability to evade innate responses. Understanding all viable “viral keys” that open these doors in humans could enable more accurate pandemic prediction and identify new targets for drugs and “universal” vaccines.
On the population side, Fridtjof Lund-Johansen, UiO reported how Norway quickly built serological infrastructure to monitor immunity during COVID‑19. Early in 2020, researchers argued publicly that immunosurveillance would be more important than merely tracking transmission. Within weeks they developed a multiplex assay for antibodies against SARS‑CoV‑2 spike and nucleocapsid, mobilised around 120,000 volunteers, and established logistics for sample collection (MoBa, Ullevål), central screening (Rikshospitalet) and secure reporting via Helsenorge. The findings were stark: seroprevalence in Oslo was only 1–2% in May 2020, and nationally still about 2% by the end of 2020—evidence that most Norwegians remained susceptible prior to vaccination. The same platform also reveals “footprints” of past influenza strains and MMR vaccination, and points towards future assays covering hundreds of pathogens, using tools like dried blood spots.
Inger‑Johanne Sand (Faculty of Law, UiO) then located these scientific advances within Norway’s legal framework for crisis management. Infection control law (Smittevernloven) defines roles for health authorities, relies on expert biological assessments to classify diseases as “generally dangerous” or “societally critical”, and must balance executive flexibility with parliamentary oversight, human rights and proportionality. For a diverse population, she argued, robust preparedness depends not only on knowing how viruses behave and how immune populations are, but also on ‘transparent, rights‑respecting procedures’ that turn that knowledge into legitimate, contestable decisions.
Session 3 – Political and public health structures for the next pandemic
Using Denmark’s “Minkgate” as a cautionary tale, Session 3 examined how stress, hierarchy and political dynamics can turn even strong institutions into sources of governance failure during a health crisis.
When governance becomes the problem: lessons from Denmark’s “Minkgate”
Session 3 examined how political and institutional architectures shape pandemic responses—sometimes enabling effective action, sometimes creating crises of their own. While work at UiO on digital preparedness planning (Anne Moen) and clinical trial capacity in global infectious diseases (Anne Ma Dyrhol‑Riise) highlighted the importance of solid plans and research infrastructure, Jostein Askim (Department of Political Science, UiO) showed how, under stress, even well‑designed systems can falter.
Askim presented an in‑depth organisational study of Denmark’s “Minkgate” scandal, a controversial episode within an otherwise lauded COVID‑19 response. In early November 2020, a warning that a vaccine‑resistant mink‑associated variant (“Cluster 5”) might make Denmark “the new Wuhan” triggered a frantic 72‑hour decision process. The government ordered the culling of all 17 million mink. Culling began, before it became clear that there was no legal basis for a nationwide order. The agriculture minister resigned; a parliamentary commission later criticized senior civil servants; breeders received billions of dollars in compensation; and the episode contributed to a snap election and change of government.
Using Karl Weick’s sensemaking framework and unusually rich commission data (texts, emails, over a million pages of documents), Askim argued that Minkgate was an internally enacted governance crisis. The “New Wuhan” alarm was interpreted differently by two coalitions: veterinary authorities focused on legality and preserving breeding stock, while a public‑health/political coalition emphasised rapid culling to protect human health, export markets and government reputation. Under intense stress, the salience of hierarchy increased; open exchange gave way to stylised vertical communication; dissenting voices were muffled; and legality concerns from the agriculture ministry were buried or left unspoken in cabinet.
Key safeguards—ministerial responsibility, legal review and inter‑ministerial balance—were overridden by what Askim termed ‘over‑assertive executive dominance’ (maktfullkommenhet) and a “get things done” mindset. For Norway, the case suggests that pandemic preparedness must address not only plans, surveillance and trial networks, but also governance cultures and routines: how warnings are interpreted, how stress affects communication, and how to protect deliberation and legality when time is short. Session 3 thus highlighted that managing the next biological crisis requires institutional self‑awareness as much as new technical tools.
Session 4 – Social and governance updates for the next pandemic
Session 4 explored how economic shock absorbers and evolving global governance arrangements—from health sovereignty to a new Pandemic Agreement—will shape societies’ capacity to withstand the next biological crisis.
From shock absorbers to health sovereignty: redesigning the pandemic playbook
Session 4 focused on how economic and global‑governance systems must adapt if societies are to withstand the next pandemic without repeating the inequities and ad hoc fixes of COVID‑19.
Halvor Mehlum (Department of Economics, UiO) defined economic resilience as the economy’s ability to absorb shocks with limited disruption and long‑term damage. Taking containment measures as exogenous, he described how Norway used an extensive set of existing instruments during COVID‑19: interest‑rate cuts, relaxed bank capital requirements, deferred tax payments, increased student loans and stipends, expanded training schemes, support via Innovation Norway, negative tax based on earlier profits, and generous furlough arrangements. These measures acted as shock absorbers, but also revealed gaps in the purely private sphere—such as unresolved tensions between landlords and small businesses, or between creditors and debtors. Mehlum argued for keeping some “sleeper facilities”, like the Government Bond Fund, ready for rapid reactivation, and for maintaining institutional memory of “unfashionable” tools like rationing and wartime economics that may again prove necessary.
Antoine de Bengy Puyvallée (Centre for Global Sustainability, UiO) then mapped the shifting landscape of global pandemic governance. COVID‑19 exposed what he called a “vaccine apartheid”, where wealthy countries secured early access to vaccines while many low‑ and middle‑income countries were left waiting. In response, states are negotiating a Pandemic Agreement grounded in sovereignty, equity, human rights and scientific evidence, covering everything from local production and technology transfer to pathogen access and benefit sharing. Yet these ambitions coincide with a sharp decline in development assistance for health—IHME estimates a drop of around 21%—and growing geopolitical attacks on WHO and on science itself.
In this context, regional and “sovereign” responses are gaining prominence: a stronger Africa CDC, the Lusaka Agenda on the future of global health initiatives, Ghana’s SUSTAIN process, and Gavi’s Leap programme all embody a desire for greater health sovereignty and country leadership. The European Union also faces tensions between regional and global solidarity. For Norway and the University of Oslo, speakers suggested, the task is twofold: to support domestic economic and social mechanisms that can cushion future shocks, and to contribute research and policy expertise that strengthens fair, rules‑based international cooperation when the next pandemic hits.
Day two – P1H and UiO building Norway’s full‑spectrum pandemic toolbox
Day two showcased how P1H and UiO are building Norway’s full‑spectrum pandemic toolbox, from deep immunology and digital epidemic twins to historical modelling, policy influence and active student engagement.
Day two of “Managing the Next Biological Crisis” highlighted how the Centre for Pandemics and One Health Research (P1H) is turning Norway’s structural strengths into a full-spectrum preparedness platform—from molecular imprinting and obesity research to digital twins, historical modelling, policy influence and student engagement.
Opening the day, director Gunnveig Grødeland set out a strategy for positioning Norway as an international leader in pandemic research and management. A small, high‑trust country with rich registries (SYSVAK, MSIS, NORM) and biobanks, Norway offers UiO researchers a unique ability to connect individual‑level biology to population‑level outcomes. Within an EU‑aligned four‑pillar framework (discovery, preclinical, clinical, regulation/manufacturing), P1H is prioritising digital twins for vaccine distribution, predictive algorithms trained on national data, and vaccines tailored to specific risk groups.
Several talks showed how UiO and P1H are building the necessary scientific and technical foundations. From CEES, Joy Banik and Bornali Das used historical plague data from Eyam and the Volga region to demonstrate that carefully structured SEI models and mortality time series can reveal age‑ and sex‑specific risks and even rule out entire classes of transmission mechanisms, distinguishing vector‑borne from human‑to‑human spread without direct microbiological data. A related epidemic digital twin for the 2022 mpox outbreak, developed by UiO and collaborators, ingests real‑time case and flight data into a Bayesian SEIR metapopulation model. It offers live decision support, allowing authorities to test counterfactuals—such as border closures or increased transmissibility—before acting, and the framework is ready to be re‑used for future Disease X.
At the immunology bench, two P1H PhD projects illustrated why vaccines cannot be “one size fits all”. Kristin Lunder Klausen (Grødeland group) presented a diet‑induced obesity model in mice showing impaired germinal centre dynamics after influenza vaccination: obese animals had fewer memory B cells, reduced somatic hypermutation in single‑cell BCR sequencing, and produced serum that protected naïve mice less well. In a companion talk, Elias Tjärnhage examined immune imprinting to different H1N1 strains (A/PR/8/1934 vs A/California/07/2009) in mice. Combining serology, neutralisation assays, flow cytometry and single‑cell RNA‑seq, he found non‑symmetrical imprinting and a discrepancy between humoral and cellular imprinting responses, with germinal‑centre B cell specificities not fully mirroring serum antibody patterns. Together, these studies support P1H’s ambition to design vaccines and strategies that account for **prior exposure history, age and common comorbidities.
Crucially, P1H also acts as a policy actor and training arena. Grødeland outlined a communication strategy that deliberately “adds complexity”, engaging ministries, FHI, clinicians, industry, UiO leadership and the public. In a hearing on revisions to the Infection Control Act, P1H argued against making nationwide shutdowns easier and for giving immunology and virology equal weight with epidemiology in legal risk assessments. Student representatives Julie Andersen and Julie Trydal showed how the centre invests in the next generation through a coffee‑break interview series, political panel debates on preparedness, and active social media, bringing One‑Health and pandemic topics into media studies, political science and medicine alike.
Taken together, the eight day‑two presentations showed P1H and UiO building an integrated preparedness ecosystem: deep biology, advanced modelling, rich national data, active policy engagement and strong student involvement—positioning Norway as a serious contributor to global pandemic readiness.