No country would agree to tighten international control over its biological laboratories, even if necessary, to avoid a recurrence of outbreaks like COVID-19, said Robert Jervis, professor of international and public relations at Columbia University.
Earlier, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, expressed an opinion in an interview that after the current pandemic, humanity will have to change the international legal framework in order to be sure of biological safety.
“I doubt that new contracts or inspection systems for biological laboratories are possible or that they will be very effective”, – Jervis said.
According to him, truly effective control regimes should be so strict that no country will agree to such measures, taking into account how many laboratories this should affect and what level of access should be. To prevent the spread of diseases, it is necessary to strengthen the existing mechanisms, the expert said.