How do we prepare for unknown viruses?

Bruce Aylward: The most important thing is exactly what we learned. We've learned a lot from the early days of this outbreak already. And as your president said, we have to go back and look at that when all this is over to figure out how to reduce these jumps across the human animal barrier happening, and when they do to rapidly identify them.

In China an awful lot was done right in part because of the incredible science and expertise, including isolating the virus, developing diagnostics and so on. But in terms of global preparedness and information sharing there is still a lot to learn.

Bruce Aylward, a Canadian epidemiologist and leader of the WHO-China Joint Mission on COVID-19, shares his insights with China Daily in Geneva on March 6.