When the next global health crisis strikes, will we be ready in 100 days?
By Mona Nemer, Yazdan Yazdanpanah, Rebecca F. Grais // 25 February 2026
Six years since COVID-19 was declared a public health emergency of international concern, science has never been more dynamic. Innovation has accelerated, sequencing technologies are more accessible, artificial intelligence is transforming biomedical research, and the World Health Organization Pandemic Agreement has laid the foundations for a long-awaited multilateral framework.
Yet one uncomfortable truth remains: the world still cannot guarantee that safe and effective diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines will be available and equitably deployed within the first 100 days of a new pandemic threat.
In 2021, the Group of Seven leading economies established the 100 Days Mission to close this gap, recognizing that the first three months of an outbreak determine its global trajectory — and that failure to act at speed could cost millions of lives. Later that same year, the Group of 20 major economies endorsed the mission.
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About the authors
Mona Nemer
Mona Nemer is chair of the International Pandemic Preparedness Secretariat and the chief science adviser of Canada. A renowned health scientist, she has written extensively on science in emergency management, and is a tireless champion of evidence-based policymaking and international collaborative efforts to strengthen pandemic preparedness and health security.
Yazdan Yazdanpanah
Yazdan Yazdanpanah is director of the French ANRS emerging infectious diseases agency and the French Aviesan Institute of Immunology, Inflammation, Infectiology, and Microbiology. He is also cochair of the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness International Network, or GloPID-R, and head of infectious disease department at Bichat Claude Bernard Hospital in Paris.
Rebecca F. Grais
Rebecca F. Grais is the executive director of the Pasteur Network. Previously, she served as the director of research at Epicentre, an epidemiology and research branch of Médecins Sans Frontières. Her work primarily focuses on the prevention of infectious diseases and emerging infections in low- and middle-income countries, with an emphasis on public health intervention studies and efficacy trials of new vaccines and therapeutics.
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